m 



■*i 




V 




THE LIFE OF ANIMALS 



THE MAMMALS 



BY 



ERNEST INGERSOLL 

AUTHOR OF "WILD NEIGHBORS," "AN ISLAND IN THE AIR, 
ETC., ETC. 



WITH FIFTEEN FULL-PAGE COLOR PLATES 
AND MANY OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



jSTefo gorfc 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1906 

All rights reserved 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCoDies Received 

MAY 23 1906 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS t OjyjL No. 
COPY B. ° 



CLASS / 



Copyright, 1906, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1906. 



NortoooB -press 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



It is possible to make natural history entertaining and attrac- 
tive as well as instructive, with no loss in scientific precision, 
but with great gain in stimulating, strengthening, and confirm- 
ing the wholesome influence which the study of the natural 
sciences may exert upon the higher grades of mental culture ; 
nor is it a matter of little moment so to shape the knowledge 
which results from the naturalist's labors that its increase may 
be susceptible of the widest possible diffusion. 

— Elliott Coues. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

A preface is needless for a book of this kind, which 
needs no explanation and could be saved by no excuses ; and 
I may substitute for it an Acknowledgment of Gratitude 
due to those who have helped me, much to the advantage of 
the reader. 

Foremost among them is Mr. George P. Brett, President 
of The Macmillan Company, who has placed at my disposal 
every facility for, and put no obstacles in the way of, my 
making the best book within my power. If I have not suc- 
ceeded, it is not the fault of my publishers. 

Next I wish to recognize gratefully the important service 
rendered the book by Dr. W. D. Matthew, Associate Curator 
of Vertebrate Paleontology in the American Museum of 
Natural History in New York, in giving me the benefit of 
his eminent knowledge of extinct mammals and in super- 
vising those pages of the book relating to them. The reader 
and myself are similarly indebted to Professor Henry F. 
Osborn, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the American 
Museum of Natural History ; to Dr. Daniel G. Elliot, Director 
of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago; to Mr. William T. 
Hornaday, Director of the New York Zoological Park, and 
to certain others, for the criticism and approval of parts of 
the work in which they were especially interested and well 
informed. 

The liberality of the New York Zoological Society has 
enabled me to place before the reader many of the original 
and admirable pictures of animals made by the Society's 
Photographer, Elwin R. Sanborn ; while other excellent illus- 



A CKNO WLED GMENTS 

trative material in this extremely difficult branch of photog- 
raphy has been derived from the private collections of Messrs. 
L. W. Brownell, Silas M. Lottridge, Clarence Lown, H. W. 
Shepheard-Walwyn, W. H. Fisher, and others. 

Lastly, I desire to mention the aid given by my daughter, 
Helen Ingersoll, who drew twelve of the fifteen colored 
plates and many of the smaller illustrations in the text. 

E. I. 

New York, 

May I, 1906. 



CON! 


-ENTS 


PAGES 


Introduction . 





. 16 


Man and the Apes 


. Primates 


• 7-57 


Bats and Flying Foxes 


. Chiroptera . 


58-67 


Shrews, Moles, and Hedgehogs 


. Insectivora . 


68-77 


Prlmitd/e Flesh-eaters 


Creodonta 


78-81 


Beasts of Prey . 


. Carnivora . 


82-229 


Marine Carnivores 


. Pinnipedia . 


. 230 


Hoofed Animals . 


. Ungidata 


. 231-385 


Elephants and Dinotheres 


. Proboscidea . 


386-399 


Manatees and Sea Cows . 


. Sirenia 


400-403 


Whales, Porpoises, etc. 


. Cetacea 


• 403 


Gnawing Animals . 


. Rodentia, 


404-468 


Sloths, Armadillos, etc. . 


. Ede?itata 


469-484 


Pangolins and Aard Varks 


. Fodientia 


485-487 


Marsupial Animals 


. Marsupialia . 


488-520 


Duckbill and Echidnas 


. Prototheria . 


521-526 


Authorities Cited 


. 


5 2 7-538 


Index of Authorities Cited 


. 


539-541 


Index 


. 


■ 543-555 



LIST OF COLORED PLATES 



Egyptian Cat 

American Monkeys 
Jaguar and Tapir 
Lion- 
Hyenas . 

r.atel and ichneumon 
Fox and Jackal 
Bear 

Antelope Heads . 
Harnessed Antelope 
Sable Antelope . 
Okapi 

Fallow Deer 
Gophers and Ground Squirrel 
Sugar Squirrel . 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 
40 

IOO 

H6. 

158 
176 
208 
214 
268 
270 

274 
296 
308 
426 
502 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



INTRODUCTION 

This is to be a book upon the mode of life, the history and 
the relationships, of the most familiar and important class 
of animals — the Mammals. It is the class, indeed, to which 
we ourselves belong, as well as do most of our domesticated 
servants and pets. From it we derive an enormous amount 
of aid and material. It furnishes us with a large part of our 
clothing and bedding ; it supplies the principal element of our 
food; it provides materials for making a multitude of things 
of daily use; and were it not for the aid of these animals the 
farmer could hardly raise his crops, nor the merchant dispose 
of his wares, nor the rest of us enjoy many of our ordinary 
comforts and pleasures. And yet the surprising circumstance 
remains, that we have no popular name for this extremely 
important group. 

If I had announced this simply as a book on " animals," 
without any descriptive subtitle, a reader might have under- 
stood in a general way what it was to be, yet he could not be 
certain; for any living creature is an "animal," and a book 
under that title might properly include the whole range of 
zoology. Hence a distinctive name is required if the author's 
purpose is to become clear. One cannot say "quadrupeds" 
with accuracy, for that would include four-footed reptiles 
and amphibians, while it would exclude man, who has only 
two feet, and such marine members of the class as have no limbs 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

at all. Similarly the terms " beast" and "brute" are inaccu- 
rate or wrong ; and so we are driven to borrow a term from the 
Latin to supply the need. This is the word "mammal" — 

a word easy to remember, definite in meaning, which 
Name. , . 

ought to come as commonly and properly into use as 

"bird" or "fish," since, like them, it stands for its whole class 
and for nothing else. This term expresses the one great dis- 
tinction which separates mammals from all other animals, 
namely, the feeding of their young upon milk, a nutritious 
liquid, rich in sugar and fats, secreted by the mother's system 
in glands^or milk bags from which the milk is sucked out by 
the little ones, whose stomachs, at first, can make use of no 
other kind of food. These milk glands are called in Latin 
mammce, whence the technical class name Mammalia, and also 
our English word "mammal" — an animal that suckles its young. 
This fact alone, had we no other means of judging, would 
show us that the mammals stand highest in the scale of animal 
life. The simply organized animalcules, the lowly worms, 
shellfish, and insects, grow up without any parental attention — 
are simply turned loose to shift for themselves. Very few 
fishes or reptiles take any special care of their little ones, and 
none feed them. In the case of many birds the young are able 
to run about and pick up their own living as soon as they emerge 
from the eggshell ; and where they remain in the nest for a 
time and are cared for by the parents the food brought them is 
usually the same as that of the old ones. This state of things 
shows progress; and in a general way the rule holds that the 
higher the organization of the animal the more helpless are its 
young, and the more they need parental care, time to mature, 
protection, and special food. Hence the peculiar provision of 
the mother's milk in this class is a sure indication of the high 
rank of mammals as a group ; and the infants of the superior 
members of it depend upon their milk diet much longer than 
do the inferior members. 



THE HAIRY COAT 

Another distinctive peculiarity of the mammals is their 
hairy covering — something that belongs to no other class of 
animals, and which gives an immense advantage. 

A hair is a threadlike outgrowth from a minute nipple sunken in the 
skin, which continues to secrete the horny substance at its root, . 

as the hair wears away at its point. Hairs vary in form and 
structure and consequently in appearance, giving such differences in pelage 
as the velvety fur of the mole, the long wavy coat of the skunk, the bristles of 
the pig, the spines of the porcupine, or the scale armor of pangolin and 
armadillo. All of these are modifications of hairs, and it seems likely that 
claws, finger nails, and sheath horns are of similar structure. 

The purpose of the hairy coat is mainly protection from the 
weather; and those mammals (of cold climates) which have a 
close woolly under fur, usually have also an outer thatch of 
longer, coarser hairs to shed the rain. Hair makes a warm 
covering, not only because of the air with which it is filled, 
but because of the air entangled among it. Watch a muskrat 
swimming. You will see that his body is covered with glisten- 
ing bubbles held between the under and outer fur, and that he 
comes out of the water with a perfectly dry skin. Thus hair 
not only keeps dampness and cold out, but the bodily heat in, 
as you well know who wear this covering at second-hand in the 
form of "furs"; and the coats of mammals vary in character 
and density not only with the climate in which they dwell, 
but with the season, the heavier winter coat loosening and 
falling out in the spring, • but growing again in the autumn. 
A semiannual shedding of the hair is characteristic of most 
northern animals, at least, as is familiarly shown by horses and 
dogs. This quality of warmth in the hair is probably the secret 
of the supremacy attained by the mammalian race. Its 
beginnings were early in the Mesozoic or Secondary age of 
geologic history, when dry land was gradually rising out of 
the seas and swamps into extensive areas, and the climate of 
the world was slowly cooling. At that time the ruling animals 

3 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



THE AGE OF 


MAMMALS 


{CENOZOIC, OR TERTIARY 


AND PUATERNARY.) 


WESTERN LAKE BASINS and CHARACTERISTIC MAMMALS 


THE TERTIARY FORMATIONS ARE REPRESENTED IN I IN THE SEDIMENTS OF THESE LAKES 


WESTERN AMERICA BY A SERIES OF DEPOSITS WERE BURIED THE REMAINS OF MANY 


FORMED ON THE BOTTOM 1 - I 'I OF 




FRESH-WAT I . 1 IICKNESS THE 


R SHORES, LEAVING THUS A RECORD 


IS NEAHLY 120O0 FEET. REQUIRING PROBABLY 1 OF 


rME SUCCESSIVE SPECIES WHICH 




TWO OR THREE MILLION YEARS TO FORM, j INH 


ABITED THE LAKE REGION. 






PERIODS 


LAKE BASINS 


™H CHAR.M tT.WSTH MAMMALS 






RECENT*™ 


_— ^ ^~~...... 


ELEPHANTS. LAST MASTObONSj 
, so USTGRBINOSIDTHS.UST SABRE-TOOTH TIGERS 






PLEISTOCENE 


EQUUS and MEGAlONYX 


u CAMELS. ONE-TOED HORSES. CAVE 8EARS 






PLIOCENE 


BLANCO and PALO DURO 

LOUP ' FORK 
[ DEEP RIVER 


,c D [GROUND SLOTHS CAHtLS'Otit TOED MORSES 

1JW ^iP'TN'FS/i rlK-T TWl,* IT U -* r-M 

JMASTOOONS.TRliE HDRWJS5 RHINOCEROSES 

4001 LAST OREOOONTSCANIELS, THREE-TOEO HORSES 

DEER. FIRST PRONG-HORN ANTELOPES 
ISO Tmf £ KOKNtfSS RHINOCEROSES nREUDOUTS .CAIKIS 






MIOCENE 


, 








<0 


'-' ■ ."'"■ \~~: : :;~ : ' 


HORNLESS aho TWIN HORNED RHINOCEROSES 






JOHN DAY 


' LAST ELOTHEfiES. OREOOONTS 






si 


KEQON NEVADA) 


1000 


PRIMITIVE CAMELS. PRIMITIVE DEER 
ROOENTS. OOOS, (WOLVES. FOX IS Kc) 






% 




— . 


CATS iSABRE-TOOTH TIOERS! 

H^SoTAMlbsTPROTohERft's' >- • c-p s - 




K. 






s 






LA'.IT . >.- iltlfS'.JCHS : irsi f 






"s; 






ELOTHEfiES. Ciis5R»i»i R«mqcc(iiiws re- --■■. 






V, 0LI60CENE 


- ■ E RIVER 

;.;>■■ , C. ■■*■*'"■ ■"■ 


1000 


• i i i i . -ii, 
5WIMMING RHINOCEROSES lAMYNODONl 






Si 




LAST riTANOTHERES dreodones « »• ■ 






*s 






FIRST TRUE HORNLESS RHINOCEROSE! 






-< 






PRIMITIVE RHINOLfROSfS. AMVhOOONTS 




\ 






v« 






TrTANuTHERES. ELOTHERES. cheooohts 






5 




800 


FIRST CAMELS. fIRST OREOOONTB. TAPIRS 






~! 




FOUR-TOEO MORSES. PRIMATES. RODENTS 










LAST UINTATHERES. cog-uki cmomotsmmis. 












UINTATHERES. 












TITAHOTHERES (mxusioniiiMfnmiw 












PRIMITIVE RHINOCEROSES (HYRACHYUS) 










FIRST ELOTHERES !ACH*NOOON; 






BRtDGER 


2000 


URGE CREODONTS (MESONYX; 
CATLIKE Wfl'OmiS; vt 006 LIKE !M LACIS} CKELLnSNTS 












FIBST SELEHOBmtT ARTKUMCTYLS itlOHWCOBOHi 












FOURTOEO HORSES (OROHIPPUSJ 












LAST PRIMITIVE GROUNO SLOTHS 












PHIUATES.ROBEIITS, MIS. LAST TILL000NT3 






4 

Z EOCENE 

t3 






LAST CORYPHOOtmS, FIRST UINTATHERES 






W ''wmS R 


8D0 


EIRST TITAHOTHERES. LAST CONDVLARTHS 










rmosonrs. RODENTS, BATS. TlLLODONTS 






^ 






amblypods (coayphodon; 








w \ C ATCH 




FIRST ARTIODACTYUS ». CLOVES MOFO AHIMAE5 




WYOWINI '![.> M k , 




CREOOONTSo. PRIMITIVE CARNIVORES. 




1 




(RESEMBLING CATS. DOGS«.ti BEARS'; 






' 




FIRST RODENTS. 










TILLOOONTS, INSECTIVDRES 










PRIMITIVE GROUNO SLOTHS 












CQNDYLARTHS .PHENACOCiONTSUm HMSLVPOOS 










300 


•:. nsi '• WiT". ' 0; " 1 

COXDYURTHSot* PRIMITIVE HOOFED MAMMALS 












500 


CREODONTS 0» PRIMITIVE CARNIVORES 










MULTITOBERCULATES IMOHOTREMES' 
PRIMITIVE EDENTATES GROUNO SLOTHSte 




1 












. LARAMIE 


5000 








** CRETACfOUSH 










!g mzsmm 









on shore were rep- 
tiles, covered with 
a leathery or 
scaly hide, and 
having cold blood. 
Now when a kind 
of small crea- 
ture arose among 
them whose skin 
sprouted hairs 
instead of scales, 
it seems to have 
profited so much 
by this novelty 
that nature en- 
larged and im- 
proved on the 
model. Its great 
advantage was in 
the warmth of 
the new covering, 
which as it be- 
came perfected in- 
duced a steadily 
increasing warmth 
of blood, and this 
promoted activity, 

Age of Mammals. 

Museum chart prepared 
by Prof. H.A.Osborn 
and Dr. W. D. Mat- 
thew. By permission 
of the American Mu- 
seum of Natural 
History, New York. 



ORIGIN OF THE MAMMALIA 

followed, of course, by advancing ability and developing brain. 
At any rate before long — geologically speaking — we find that 
the hairy mammals became numerous, and that the reptiles 
correspondingly decreased, till finally the dinosaurs, pterodac- 
tyls, and other cool-blooded, sluggish, massive land reptiles had 
died out, and the earth was ruled by warm-blooded, active 
mammals and birds. 

The traceable history of mammals extends back to the Tri- 
assic, the oldest of the three divisions of the Mesozoic era, but 
only three or four Triassic specimens have been dis- Thero _ 
covered, and these are so imperfectly preserved that morpha. 
they give little information. Just preceding that time there 
flourished a group of reptiles, the Theromorpha, which were 
large terrestrial forms with skull, teeth, and fore limbs surpris- 
ingly like those of mammals, and which fill an intermediate 
place between the highest amphibians of that time and the low- 
est of the mammals; "and it is altogether probable that from 
amongst some of their number . . . the Mammalia arose." 
But this by no means clears up the problem, for the solution 
of which future information must be awaited. 

It is not doubted, however, that true mammals, — though 
few and very small and inconspicuous, as they would need to 
be in a land filled with ravenous reptiles, — existed throughout 
the whole Mesozoic era; and before its close the two grand 
divisions of Mammalia, Prototheria and Eutheria, had become 
established ; and the two primary divisions of the latter, the 
Marsupials and Placentals, had already been separated. Then 
came the time when the mammals began to go ahead and pos- 
sess the earth, — a process pictured by Prof. W. B. Scott : — 

"The passage from the Mesozoic to the Tertiary was marked by wide- 
spread and very important changes in the physical geography of the north- 
ern hemisphere and by an extraordinary change in the life of the earth. 
Vegetation had attained almost its modern state. . . . The huge and bizarre 
reptiles of the Mesozoic had all disappeared, while the mammals came to 

5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the front in an astonishing outburst, as it may be fairly called [so that the 
Tertiary is styled Age of Mammals]. Henceforth the mammals were to 
be the dominating type, taking the place of the dethroned species. 

"Much of mammalian history has been preserved in the fresh -water 
deposits of Tertiary age in various parts of the world, but in no region yet 
Age of known with such fullness as in the western part of the United 

Mammals. States, where are found deposits covering almost the whole 
of Tertiary time. These great rock masses, of different dates, cover thou- 
sands of square miles, and were laid down in various ways. Some were 
accumulated in lake basins, others were spread by sluggish streams over 
their flood plains, others may have been heaped up by the winds in 
semi-deserts. The rocks thus accumulated entombed the bones of innu- 
merable animals, the fossil remains of which are not only extraordinarily 
abundant, but are preserved in a degree of completeness found in very few 
other parts of the world." 119 

Note. — The small raised figures in the text refer to the enumerated 
List of Authorities at the end of the book. 

Technical (specific) names will be given, so far as it seems desirable, 
in the Index. 




Skull of Sivatherium. 



MAN AND THE APES — Order, PRIMATES 

The most perfectly organized animal, and the one best known 
to us, is man; and a book of zoology which omitted him 
would leave out the standard by which, in a certain sense, all 
others are measured. He is readily classified, apart from in- 
tellectual attainments, at the head of the highest order of 
mammals, the Primates, which includes with him the manlike, 
or anthropoid, apes, the monkeys, and the lemurs. All these 
have five fingers or toes (digits), each covered at the tip by a 
flat nail; and in most cases the thumb or great toe, or both, 
are "opposable" — that is, maybe bent around opposite the 
other digits so as to form a grasping organ. The higher the 
Primate in the scale of organization the more perfectly are its 
fore limbs and hands adapted to seizing and handling objects, 
and its hind limbs to supporting and moving the body ; and the 
whole sole of the "plantigrade" foot rests upon the ground 
instead of the toes alone, as in the case of the " digitigrade " 
dogs, cattle, and the like. 

These and other characteristics fit the Primates for life in 
trees, where nearly all spend their time; and the peculiarities 
of the skeleton and system of muscles are such as follow from 
this mode of existence. The number of young, as a rule, is no 
more than two annually, and they are born in a helpless con- 
dition, often almost naked of hair, toothless, and with the eyes 
shut ; hence they must for a period be nursed and carried about 
by the mother. The food consists almost wholly of fruit 
and other soft or easily digested vegetable materials, insects 
and eggs, and the teeth are of nearly even size and ordinarily 
thirty-six in number. 

7 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Man is distinguished from his fellow-Primates mainly by his 
erect walk, the roundness of his skull, caused by the indrawing 
Man as a anc * general lessening of the face, and by the ex- 
Primate, pansion above and behind the ears of the brain 
case ; by his power of articulate speech ; and by the absence of a 
hairy covering. This statement takes no account of that vast 
superiority of mind which chiefly distinguishes him; but it 
may be noted here that the differences in size and complexity 
of the brain — the seat of the mental faculties — between him 
and the greater apes are no greater than exist between some 
men and other men. 1 

As to his faculty of speech, that seems a mental accomplish- 
ment rather than a physical peculiarity, largely due to early 
men having caught the idea of making and using articulate 
sounds, and having perfected the art by practice. The vocal 
organs in the human throat do not differ materially from those 
of other vertebrates, nor are they remarkably advanced in per- 
fection. The shape of the human mouth and teeth, the more 
refined form and mobility of the lips, tongue, etc., undoubtedly 
aid in controlling the voice, and in pronunciation of sounds 
that have become the symbols of ideas, and therefore must be 
imitated exactly and repeated on demand. The ability to do 
this depends, however, on the possession of an educated ear, 
as is plain from the fact that persons totally deaf are also speech- 
less, although their vocal organs are perfect, and may be 
taught to pronounce words ; and one who has not a fair sense 
of melody in his ear is usually unable to learn to sing. 

Nearly all of man's physical peculiarities are the result of his gradually 
acquired erectness, which has caused his spine to assume an elastic, S-like 
curve, rounding out at the shoulders and in at the waist, which forms a sort 
of spring, easing the jar of stepping or jumping, and also makes a better 
brace for exerting the strength of the limbs, while it adds flexibility to the 
body. The pelvis, greatly broadened, falls into an upright position, so as 
to bring the legs directly under the trunk, whose weight they must support 

8 



FEATURES OF HUMAN STRUCTURE 

without help from the arms. This duty, gradually enforced, has strength- 
ened, straightened, and nearly equalized the bones of the legs, extended 
the heel, and enlarged and arched the instep to bear the weight of the whole 
frame ; while the toes, useful now only to help the foot in holding its place, 
and in pushing and balancing the body, when a step forward is taken, are 
short and strong, with the great toe squarely alongside the others. The 
arms are shortened, the hands extremely flexible and become the most 
perfect grasping organs, due mainly to the greater length and freedom of 
the thumb, for whose control have been developed one of the very few novel 
muscles possessed by man alone. To his hands, next to his brain, man 
owes the possibility of his great advancement. 

It is in the head, however, that the most striking human feature is seen, 
apart from the erect posture and accurate balance of the body upon its 
pillarlike legs. The skull is a dome poised beneath its center The Hu- 
instead of aft of it, as in the apes and lower creatures, and man Face - 
it contains twice as much brain room as does that of any other Primate. 
The frontal bones have been shortened and contracted until in the best 
examples the face protrudes little if any beyond the front line of the com- 
paratively lofty brow.* 2 The jaws have become semicircular in shape, the 
teeth small and crowded, the canines never much larger than the others, 
the chin is well filled out, the nose narrow but prominent and well separated 
from the mouth, and the eyes deeply set in comparatively small, bony 
sockets, which do not enlarge inward, as in lower animals, to obstruct the 
brain case; while the ears are small, low, and set close to the head. Sev- 
eral of these features may be seen separately in various apes and monkeys, 
but their combination is perfected in man, and gives to his head a dignity, 
and to his countenance an expression, unmistakably his own. 

Man's brain may be compared properly only with the brains of the an- 
thropoid apes. "The human brain differs from that of the manlike apes," 
says Forbes, 3 "in regard to its convolutions and their separating grooves, 
only in minor characters ; but in weight, as in capacity, very greatly. The 
weight of a healthy, full-grown human brain never descends below thirty- 
two ounces; that of the largest gorilla, far heavier than any man, never 
attains to more than twenty. Yet 'the difference in wsight of brain between 
the highest and the lowest men is far greater relatively and absolutely than 
between the lowest man and the highest ape.' " 

Some fossil bones found in 1894 in Java by Professor Eugene 
Du Bois are of extreme interest, because they represent a creature 
between man and the highest apes which lived in the early 

9 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Pliocene epoch next preceding the Glacial epoch. Only the 
top of the skull, a thigh bone, and two teeth are known; 
Pithecan- an d they indicate an erectly walking animal, about 
thropus. £ ve f eet an j s j x inches tall, which in general appear- 
ance, and in having a brain capacity almost equal to that of the 
earliest known human beings (the cave dwellers of the Nean- 
derthal in France), was much nearer man than is any modern 
ape. This creature is truly, as Professor Haeckel puts it, 
"the long-searched-for missing link," in other words, represents 
the commencement of humanity. 4 It is named Pithecanthropus 
erectus. 

The rude, chipped- stone implements found in the red clay on 
the chalk downs of southern England, 67 and in similar Pliocene 
deposits in neighboring parts of France and Belgium, denote 
the existence of, in that region, "Eolithic man," a being capable 
at least of making these objects contemporary with Pithecan- 
thropus in Java; but no fossil bones of Preglacial man in 
Europe have been recovered. 

Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orang-utan, and Gibbons 

The chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utan, and gibbons or 
" anthropoid apes," differ from mankind principally in the form 
of the skull, and in the great length of the arm as compared with 
the leg. The foot is more handlike, too, a tree-gripping rather 
than a ground- stepping organ. Nevertheless, all can stand or 
even walk fairly erect upon the ground, balancing themselves 
by outstretched arms; when they are in haste, however, and, 
indeed, ordinarily, they rest their weight upon their long arms 
and closed hands, the knuckles touching the ground, and so 
progress on all fours or swing along somewhat like a man on 
crutches. The spine of the chimpanzee alone among them 
shows much approach to an S-like curve, and the skull, which 
is longest fore and aft, is set on the neck well forward of its 



ANTHR OPOID CHAR A C TEA' IS TICS 



Chimpan 
zee. 



center. The skull is thick, ridged along the crest, and unites 
into a solid globe much earlier than do the skulls of our own 
infants, putting an end much sooner to the possible expansion 
of the brain. The forehead is sloping, the jaws are very massive 
and protruding, and the 32 teeth are large, the canines becom- 
ing formidable tusks in old males. Bony ridges over the eyes 
give a frowning expression, especially to the gorilla. The 
brain is much smaller than that of man, where it is never less 
than 55 cubic inches, while in the chimpanzee it is, on the 
average, 27J cubic inches, in the gorilla 35 inches, in the orang- 
utan 26, and in the gibbons far less. 

The chimpanzees are the best known, having been exhibited 
alive in Europe at least as early as 1641. Previously to that 
narratives of travelers to the Guinea coast, where 
the Portuguese already had trading stations, had con- 
tained a fair account 
of these "men of the 
woods," published 
in such books as 
"K i n g d o m of 
Congo" (Frankfort, 
1598) and "Purchas 
His Pilgrimes" 
(London, 2d ed., 
1625). Since then 
books relating to 
equatorial Africa 
have abounded with 
stories about them, 
but much has been 
hearsay, or vague 




Copyright. NY. Zool Society. 

Young Chimpanzee 



Sanborn, Phot. 



Polly.' 



and exaggerated. 

Many young chimpanzees, however, have been kept captive 

and some of them closely studied, so that we are fairly ac- 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

quainted with this ape's character and intelligence when 
tamed, though still in the dark as to the limit of its capacity 
for education. 

Sifting out the truth as well as we can, it appears that there 
are at least two species of chimpanzee, — the "common" one 
and the bald one. The former and more familiar one is the 
larger, and has a coat of straight, silky, brownish black hair, 
which falls smoothly away from a parting in the middle of the 
head and forms bushy whiskers. The face, great outstanding 
ears, hands, and feet are naked, much wrinkled, and dull flesh- 
color, growing darkly reddish with age. The latter species 
has hair of deeper black, but the growth ceases above the ears, 
leaving the whole crown of the head bald, and this hairless 
skin, with that of the face and ears, fingers and toes, is deep 
black; the ears are even broader and flatter than in the other 
species, and the features noticeably different. A variety of 
this bald ape is represented by Du Chaillu's 6 "koola-kamba," 
and by the female Johanna, which was bought from the 
Lisbon "Zoo" by the Barnum-Bailey Circus Company, when 
two years old, and was exhibited in the United States and in 
Europe from 1894 to 1897, but died in Nuremberg in 1900 
when approaching seven years of age. 121 Sally, of which 
more is to be said presently, endured the northern climate 
longest, living in the London Zoological Gardens eight years 
( 1 883-1 891). Then there was brought to the Zoological Gar- 
den at Dresden, Germany, in 1875, a y° un g female ape which 
was most interesting and puzzling to naturalists by its combina- 
tion of the characteristics of both chimpanzee and gorilla. 
It was named Mafuka, and proved a wild, unmanageable 
creature, which was carefully described and pictured by Hart- 
mann, 7 whose book on the anthropoid apes is the most com- 
prehensive account of them we have. The general opinion is 
that Mafuka was a mongrel between a chimpanzee and a male 
gorilla. Koppenfels says other examples are known. 



CHIMPANZEE FAMILY LIFE 

Chimpanzees belong to the forests of all equatorial Africa 
west of the great lakes, but the bald species seems limited to the 
Gaboon Valley. 

They are rarely found in open country, although they spend 
much of their time on the ground, hiding in thickets in family 
groups, and are nowhere numerous. Mated pairs 

& r ' . , , r Habits. 

seem to remain together permanently; and more 
than one missionary has been disconcerted, when he tried to 
show the Africans the wrongness of having several wives, by 
their disgusted reply that they did not wish to be like apes. 
They show great affection for their families, the father often 
taking the baby from the mother and carrying it, especially in 
dangerous places; and they seek to assist one another when 
hurt or in trouble. The grief shown when one loses its mate 
in captivity is real and touching. When at rest they usually 
sit with their backs against a tree, and ordinarily move about 
on all fours, their gait when walking erect being weak and un- 
certain, so that then they feel unsafe. They are secretive and 
timid, and will run away from a man or woman if allowed; 
yet when cornered they prove themselves ugly fighters, striving 
always to bite off the fingers or toes of the foe — usually an- 
other ape. The only quadrupeds they need fear are leopards 
and crocodiles. 

There is no good evidence that they arm themselves with sticks as 
weapons, but the Xiam-niams told Schweinfurth that in a fight with a negro 
one would if it could wrest the spear from the man's hand and use it vigor- 
ously. The Manyema hunters, on the other hand, assert that a captured 
spear is simply broken and thrown away. Both reports may well have been 
true. Dr. Livingstone writes 8 of battles between the sokos, as he calls 
them, and the Manyema negroes west of Lake Tanganyika, who frequently 
organized hunts for these pillagers of their plantations, and drove them into 
nets, where they would become entangled and could be killed with assagais. 
They hunted them similarly for the sake of their flesh; and the missionary 
suggests that the cannibalism of these negroes might have grown out of 
this taste. The Manyema seemed to regard the animal on the whole as an 

«3 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

extremely keen, cunning, mischievous sort of "good fellow," fond of scaring 
persons alone in the forest, or of picking up a child and pinching it to hear 
it squeal, but meaning no great harm by its pranks. 

The chimpanzee families move about a great deal, mostly 
at night and in search of food, and now and then gather about 
a village in such numbers as to work great damage, especially 
to young bananas. Their food consists almost wholly of the 
softer forest fruits, varied by grubs, eggs, and fledgelings of 
birds, lizards, and the like, and in captivity they become very 
fond of meat, and cleverly catch live birds put into their cages. 

It is to obtain such food that the apes climb the trees, and the 
German explorer Schweinfurth describes 9 how prevalent and 
secure they are in the forests northwest of Albert Nyanza, where 
the trees grow one above the other in stages, the upper spring- 
ing from seeds implanted in the top branches of those beneath 
them, and forming "galleries" so dense that it is difficult for 
the wiriest of climbers to penetrate them, and "bowers in which 
perpetual darkness reigns." 

To such a leafy stronghold the ape retreats at night, and builds 
a rude platform of branches on which his family lie down for 
rest, while he may curl up in a crotch beneath its shelter; but 
no such a roofed hut as Du Chaillu portrayed seems ever to be 
constructed. 

Their feeding time is mainly evening and early morning, 
and it is then that these apes are most active and noisiest, 
uttering the cries, shrieks, and howls which have impressed all 
travelers, and whose loudness is due to air sacs and an arrange- 
ment in the throat resembling that of the South American 
howlers. Hence we read of troops of hundreds, but in reality 
eight or ten chimpanzees together make a "crowd," and it 
usually consists mostly of young ones, who make as much 
sport as possible out of the occasion, and are particularly fond 
of drumming on resonant logs or hard earth with sticks. That 
this simplest of possible employments of an instrument or tool 

14 



BKUTISHXESS OF THE GORILLA 

should be the only one achieved by the highest of the apes, is 
striking testimony to the wide distance between it and the lowest 
human savage. 

The next of the great apes — the West- African gorillas — 
are the biggest, fiercest, and yet most anthropoid of them all ; 
the most repulsive of all beasts, perhaps, because 
so like humanity devoid of every attractive quality 
except mere physical strength. A gorilla is of so massive a 
frame as to weigh more than twice as much as any man of 
similar height. In relative shortness of arms and length of 
legs it stands nearest man, but its brain is no larger than that 
of a four-year-old child. The face is naked and black, very 
wide, with a huge protruding mouth, nostrils broad and flat, 
and the eyes overhung by bony ridges. To a prominent ridge 
on the skull, running from the forehead back to the nape, are 
attached thick masses of temporal and neck muscles. The 
canine teeth are formidable tushes, and the whole face, crowned 
by reddish hair, and set closely above the shaggy, massive 
shoulders, expresses brutal savagery. The coat consists of 
blackish or reddish bristles, with an under fur, and it becomes 
gray with age. The arms reach down to the knee when the 
gorilla stands erect, as it will readily do, for its feet are big and 
have a prominent heel ; and, as might be expected of so heavy 
a creature, it spends much time on the ground, and sleeps 
there on beds of weed stalks, etc., or, more often, perhaps, 
makes " nests" in trees for the night. It seems to be less 
timid than the chimpanzee, probably because it has nothing 
to fear but an occasional leopard. 

Until recently only a single species, the original Gorilla 
savagei, was known, and it was believed to be restricted to the 
forested coast hills between the Kamarun and Western 
Kongo rivers; but since 1903 other specimens of species, 
huge size have been shot in the interior of the French Kongo 
(State), and also near Lake Albert Edward. In La Nature 

15 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

for July 29, 1905, Dr. Hamy reproduces photographs and 
descriptive notes of a male killed far up the Sanga Valley, at 
Ouassu (or Uesso), which measured 2.3 meters (nearly 7^ feet) 
tall and 1.5 meters across the shoulders. This is, at least, a 
foot taller than any coast gorilla recorded. In the same year a 
large gorilla was killed between Lakes Albert Edward and 
Kivu, described as Gorilla beringeri by Matschie. Both these 
are now regarded as species separate from each other and 




A Female Gorilla Walking. 

from the coast one; but further information may modify that 
opinion. Little, in fact, is known of the living nature and 
habits of any wild gorilla. The cabbage, or terminal bud, 
of the oil palm, bananas, pawpaws, and plantains are the 
favorite fare, often obtained by raiding plantations. Various 
hard nuts are also eaten, some of which the coast gorilla is 
said to crack with a stone ; but on this, as on most other points 
of behavior, contradictory reports exist. 

16 



STREXGTH OF THE GORILLA 

Du Chaillu's thrilling accounts of ferocious fighting with men have been 
completely discredited, and YVinwood Reade, who visited the Gaboon 
Valley directly after him, and other well-informed persons, assert that Du 
Chaillu never saw a living gorilla. "That a huge arm descends from a 
tree, draws up and chokes the wayfarer, must be false," declares Lydekker, 
"for intelligent natives have confessed to knowing no instance of the gorilla 
attacking man. . . . But we must believe that this ape, if provoked or 
wounded, is a terrible foe, capable of ripping a man open with one stroke 
of the paw or of cracking the skull of a hunter as easily as a man cracks a 
nut. There is a tale of a tribe that kept an enormous gorilla as executioner, 
which tore its victim to pieces, until an Englishman, doomed to meet it, 
noticing a large swelling near its ribs, killed it with a heavy blow or two on 
the weak spot." 

There is little doubt, at any rate, that this is the least intelligent and most 
savage of all the great apes. Only one of the several young ones that have 
been sent to Europe have lived more than eighteen months; and the single 
one brought to the United States (in 1893) survived only five days. Horna- 
day says this is due to the fact that "they sulk, often refuse food, will not 
exercise, and die of indigestion." A second baby, imported in 1905, died 
on the voyage. 

The third of the anthropoid apes is the orang-utan, or "man 
of the woods," whose home is Borneo and the eastern lowlands 
of Sumatra. In Borneo it inhabits the swampy for- orang- 
ests between the coast and the interior mountains, utan - 
to which it retires in the dry season. It is more often seen than 
the others, and has been well studied by Brooke, 29 Wallace, 31 
Hornaday, 30 Beccari, 209 and other naturalists in its native woods, 
and when dead by many anatomists. The Dyaks call it " mias," 
and distinguish several varieties. 

The orang-utan spends its life more exclusively in the tree 
tops than does either the gorilla or chimpanzee, rarely descend- 
ing to the ground except to get water, and then it moves slowly 
and awkwardly by swinging its body along between its long 
arms used much like a pair of crutches. In the trees, however, 
the orangs travel with the certainty and ease of practiced gym- 
nasts. Too heavy for leaping, they reach out and grasp with 
c 17 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



their hooklike hands a limb or a bunch of twig ends, swing 
underneath to the next hold, and so on at great speed, as an 
athlete travels hand over hand beneath a tight, rope. Usually 
they go singly ; or a female may be accompanied by an infant, 
which clings astride her waist, and also, perhaps, by an older 
offspring, for the young stay with their mother until two years 
old, and do not mature until twelve or fourteen. At dusk each 
old one weaves together broken branches into a sleeping-plat- 
form, making a sat- 
isfactory couch in 
two or three min- 
utes, usually not 
above twenty-five 
feet from the 
ground. Such nests 
are found so numer- 
ously that probably 
a fresh one is built 
every night ; and 
Hornaday describes 
the animal as sleep- 
ing on its back, with 
one or more hands 
hooked around an 
adjacent branch. 
Captive orang- 
utans always grasp the head of the bed or the bars of the cage 
when asleep, even though lying on the floor. 

"The orang-utan," says Forbes, "is of a very shy and un- 
certain disposition ; if captured when full grown it is wild and 
ferocious; when young it is easily trained, but never lives 
in captivity to attain maturity. When attacked and hard- 
driven by human enemies, and it gets to close quarters with 
them, it can be a formidable and dangerous antagonist, and has 

18 




Copyright, N. Y. Zobl. Society. 

Young Orang-utan 



Sanborn, Phot. 
DOHONG." 



HABITS OF ORANG-UTAN 

been known to fatally injure its assailants." A Dyak hunter 
told Wallace: "The mias has no enemies. No animals 
dare attack it but the crocodile and the python. He always 
kills the crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling 
open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks 
a mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it and soon 
kills it." Almost every specimen taken, however, shows scars 
of fighting among themselves. It will rarely unprovoked 
attack a man. In one case, as Dr. A. R. Wallace has recorded, 
a female mias on a durian tree kept up for at least ten minutes 
a continuous shower of branches and of the heavy spined fruits, 
as large as thirty-two pounders, which most effectively kept 
every one clear of the tree she was on. She could be seen break- 
ing them off and throwing them down with every appearance of 
rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and evidently 
meaning mischief. This durian is the vile-smelling but delicious 
fruit which in its season forms the favorite food of men and ani- 
mals alike. Otherwise these apes live on leaves, buds, nuts, and 
soft fruits. 

This Malayan ape is smaller and weaker than its African cousins, 
males standing not more than four feet six inches, and weighing 160 
pounds, while the females are smaller. The body is bulky, the belly 
protuberant, and the legs very short, while the arms are so long that 
the fingers hang down to the ankle. The coat is a variable dark brick-red 
and long, forming a beard in old males. The head is short and high, with 
the bony crest of the skull and the ridge over the eyes less prominent than 
in the gorilla ; while the nose is insignificant, and the jaws are large and 
protrusive, with a long smooth upper lip. The eyes have a pleading ex- 
pression, the ears are small and closely appressed, and many of the older 
males have the cheeks greatly and distinctively broadened by flat callosi- 
ties. Lastly, although its brain is most like that of man, the orang-utan is 
inferior, in general, to both the gorilla and the chimpanzee. 

The fact that it is confined to these Eastern islands, so far removed from 
its relatives, is singular but explainable, for fragmentary fossil remains of 
manlike apes (especially one named Dryopithecus), none older than the 
Miocene Age, have been found in southern Europe and eastward to China, 

19 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

showing that in past time such animals existed throughout the warmer parts 
of the Old World. Some of these fossils are evidently of existing species, 
which appear by their present restricted habitats to have nearly come to the 
end of their career, — for species rise and flourish and decline as do individ- 
uals, — and all the anthropoids are doubtless doomed to speedy extinction. 

As has been said, none but young examples of these great 
apes have been kept in captivity (except at Calcutta) where 
they could be under scientific notice ; but chimpanzees ten or a 
dozen years old have been seen in Europe. The little ones of all 
species seem much alike, gentle and playful when kindly treated, 
affectionate toward their friends, and safely allowed to run loose 
on shipboard or in villages, but likely to fly into a rage when 
teased, and to grow sullen and revengeful toward those who 
have injured them, and this viciousness increases as they grow 
older and learn the measure of their strength. 

One of the most interesting ever shown in the United States was the chim- 
panzee Crowley, who traveled three or four years with a circus, and in 
Anthro- winter was lodged in the Central Park Menagerie, in New York. 

poids in When he came to us in June, 1884, he was only about a year old 

and weighed only 15 pounds; in June, 1886, he weighed 57 
pounds, and two years later no pounds. He died of tubercular phthisis 
in August, 1888, when his total height was 4 feet and 4 inches. His skel- 
eton and mounted skin may still be seen in the American Museum of 
Natural History. Another noted chimpanzee shown in the United States 
in 1890 was Chiko. Dohong and Polly were in the New York Zoo in 1903. 

The youngsters of all three species are about equally capable 
of being taught simple tricks, and come to understand many 
human words, and to make their cries express various emotions 
comprehended by their keepers; but they are sedate as com- 
pared with the vivacity of the mischief-loving monkeys. Cir- 
cuses abound in trained young chimpanzees and orang-utans 
which will wear clothes, sit at table, and eat all sorts of things 
with knife, fork, and spoon, drink from tumblers, smoke a 
tobacco pipe, use pen and paper, and do many quaint " stunts" 
with a comical resemblance to a little old man. In these feats 

20 



THE MALAYAN GIBBONS 



Gibbons. 



the chimpanzee shows himself the most nimble in wits as well 
as in body. As a London keeper told Lydekker: "The orang 
is a buffoon; the chimpanzee a gentleman." Of the many 
excellent accounts of these young apes one of the fullest is that 
in "Cassell's Natural History," Vol. I, where Sayers, Broderip, 15 
and other writers are 
quoted extensively. 

Lowest of the an- 
thropoid ape family 
stand the gibbons, — 
slender, monkeylike 
forms of the Indo- 
Malayan region hav- 
ing wholly arboreal 

habits, in 

flocks, and 
feeding on fruit, 
leaves, insects, spi- 
ders, birds' eggs, etc. 
They have arms so 
long that when they 
stand upright the 
finger tips touch the 
ground. The jaws 
and nose are pro- 
longed into a snout, 
and the canines are very large in both sexes, while the brain 
is simple. The largest is the Sumatran siamang, which stands 
three feet tall and is shining black; and it, like the orang, has 
distensible air sacs in the throat, connected with the larynx, 
yet its howling is no louder than that of the other gibbons 
which have no such sac. The cry of the siamang is described 
by a correspondent of The Field (Oct. 18, 1879) as precisely 
like the howling of dogs : — 

21 




Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Society. 

A Siamang. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"One might almost fancy that the various voices were arranged with a 
view to a concert effect. There is always one old gentleman with a very 
deep bass, who jerks out his howl after a swinelike fashion; the baritones, 
contraltos, and sopranos expressing their feelings in prolonged notes. 
There seems also to be some kind of competition between the siamangs and 
the onkas, for no sooner does a music party of the larger species assemble, 
than a miserable spider-legged onka plants itself in an adjacent tree and 
gives full play to its powerful lungs. The cry of the onka beats that of the 
jackal and laughing hyena clean out of the field, and at times nearly drives 
one to distraction. It is exactly like that of a suffering child, only four times 
as strong." 

Among the most distinctive gibbons are the hoolock, of the 
Himalayan foothills, which is brown or black relieved by a 
white band across the forehead; the lar, or reddish-faced, white- 
handed gibbon of the Malay Peninsula; the wau-wau of Java, 
Borneo, and the Sulu Islands, which is ashy gray, with whitish 
eyebrows and black cap, fingers, and toes; and the Sumatran 
onka, or agile gibbon. All these are much alike and frequent 
mountain forests up to about four thousand feet. They are 
remarkably adept at climbing and leaping — will, for example, 
rush end over end down hill slopes' "by grasping bamboos or 
branches that bend beneath their weight, and allow them to 
drop until they can seize the ends of other bamboos and branches 
lower on the slope, and take another mighty swing downward 
"almost like a flock of birds." 

However, when they do occasionally come to the ground, 
they show themselves able to walk erect and more human- 
like than any other ape, setting the foot down flat upon the sole, 
holding the long arms gracefully above the head, and so taking 
a rapid and funny gait, which would recommend them to Del- 
sarte or an American cake-walk expert. Forbes had a tame 
siamang that used to accompany him every evening about the 
village plaza, leaning elegantly on his arm, to the admiration 
of all the people ; and a French writer describes how one would 
walk down the length of a table without disturbing a dish. 



TWO TYPES OF MONKEYS 



All the gibbons are peaceable among themselves, gentle, 
cheerful, easily tamed when caught young, and show a quick 
affection toward man. One of the most complete and illumi- 
nating studies of the group is that by Haeckel. 28 



Monkey 
Types. 




Types of Nostrils in Monkeys, 
i. Platyrrhine. 2. Catarrhine. 



Baboons, Monkeys, and Marmosets 

It has already been said that all the Primates fall into one of 
two groups: (i) the broad-nostriled or Old World apes and 

monkeys ; and 

(2) the New World, | |^, 

narrow - nostriled monkeys ' 
and marmosets. A part of 
the former group (man and 
the manlike apes) have been 
considered. Now we are to 
take up the remaining fam- 
ilies of Primates, only three 
in number, which comprise 
the baboons, macaques, langurs, capuchins, howlers, marmosets, 
and others popularly recognized as "monkeys." 

One of the most singular and interesting things in zoology is the deeply 
cut line separating these two groups of animals, which at first glance seem 
so much alike. The compressed noses of the Old World apes and monkeys, 
to which they owe their group name Catarrhina, contrasted with the widely 
separated, outward-flaring nostrils of the Platyrrhina, or New World fami- 
lies, give only one of several distinctions. The former are, as a whole, of 
larger size than the latter. Their anatomy differs; thus while the catar- 
rhines (including man) have only thirty-two teeth, the platyrrhines have 
thirty-six — four extra premolars. The catarrhines generally have those 
patches of hard, hairless, brightly colored skin on the buttocks, termed 
ischial callosities, never present in the American forms, for the latter 
do not sit up upon their haunches. Some Old World monkeys boast 
long tails, but these never show the slightest tendency toward that pre- 
hensibility so characteristic of our platyrrhines. Again, no American 
monkey possesses distensible folds inside of the cheeks, called cheek 

23 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

pouches, characterizing many foreign species. These distinctions have ex- 
isted forever, apparently, "since no fossil remains of monkeys at all inter- 
mediate have so far been discovered"; and this is another evidence of the 
very early time at which South America became isolated, as shown by the 
singularities of its fauna. The Old World catarrhines are the superior 
in organization, and must receive first notice. 

All the Old World monkeys, apart from the anthropoid apes, 
belong to a single family, Cercopithecidae, divisible into two 
sections: (i) small, agile, long-tailed forms (Semnopithecines) 
without cheek pouches; and (2) larger, short-tailed forms 
(Cercopithecines) with cheek pouches. 

The semnopithecines seem to have the higher organization, 
as is shown especially by the complicated stomach, in the first 
chamber of which may be stowed a large amount of the leaves 
that constitute the bulk of their food, to be slowly passed on 
to the truly digestive sac. These monkeys may therefore 
pick and swallow the materials for a meal with great rapidity, 
and then go to some safer place for its slow digestion, thus 
keeping out of danger a much larger part of the time than if 
they had to eat long and slowly ; nor do they need the pouches 
in their cheeks which the other group uses for a similar econ- 
omy of time and risk. All dwell in trees, and the group in- 
cludes the small African guerezas and the Asiatic langurs, — 
the latter best known by the sacred monkey, or 

Langurs. 

Pentelle of India, venerated by the Hindoos because 
it represented Hanuman, the Monkey-god who assisted Rama, 
one of the mythic heroes. Hence no faithful Brahmin Hindoo 
will harm one (though delighted to see another man drive them 
away or even kill them), and they come fearlessly about vil- 
lages, raiding gardens and orchards, and pilfering from shops 
and food stores, making themselves where numerous a great 
nuisance. The pious have thrown a similar protection over 
other species, so that in some parts of India all monkeys are 
safe from molestation, and become intolerable. J. L. Kip- 

24 



MISCHIEVOUS INDIAN MONKEYS 

ling " and Felix Oswald 12 ° tell entertaining stories of their 
too familiar ways. Sometimes a community will capture a 
band and ship them away, but if they do not come back others 
will take their places, and their thieveries must be guarded 
against incessantly. Near Simla there is a famous " monkey 
temple," on Jakko Hill, said to be presided over by a queer, 
fanatical fakir who is by birth and education a European. 

Like most monkeys these Indian langurs abominate the 
tiger, and a troop racing overhead and "slanging " the king of 




Entellus Monkey or Hanuman. 



the jungle has many a time led to the downfall of his striped 
majesty; therefore tiger hunters join with priests in defend- 
ing the little gray mischief-makers, laughing at their black 
faces and well-brushed whiskers as they peer saucily down 
through the foliage. 

Some twenty-five or thirty other species of leaf-eating langurs 
are scattered wherever forests occur, from the snowy heights 
of Kashmir to Borneo, and many most interesting things are 
related of them by Blanford, Jerdon, Hose, Wallace, Blyth, 
Swinhoe, Hornaday, Forbes, and other writers familiar with 
that part of the world. Some of them are gay with black, 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



white, chestnut, yellow, and other tints. All feed mainly on 
leaves, flowers, and young shoots; utter loud, not unmusical 
cries, and move about in troops. Their long slender bodies 
and long limbs, resembling those of the American spider 
monkeys, give them vast leaping powers, and astonishing 
flights will be made by a band, one after another, from some 
lofty tree top to a lower one, maybe thirty feet away. One trick 
is to spring upon a limb in such a way that in its recovery from 
the pressure of their fall it will lift them up to where they can 
seize another and so go on. Often the mothers carry a cling- 
ing young one in these perilous leaps, and the accuracy with 

which they calculate the dis- 
tance and other facts of the 
case is wonderful. 

One notable species is the 
large wanderoo of Ceylon, so 
fully described by Nose Mon- 
Tennent, 17 and the key * 
object of quaint superstitions ; 
but the most remarkable of all 
is the nose monkey of Borneo, 
which the Dyaks laughingly 
call " white man," and which 
many naturalists place in a 
separate genus. This is of 
large size, is brown with gray rump, limbs, and tail, cheeks 
yellow, and a nose that gradually elongates with age, until in 
old ones it is a bulbous, wagging proboscis that hangs down 
below to the chin, and gives a most comical caricature of a 
human countenance to the face. They are nowhere com- 
mon and rarely seen, though their cry, like a deep tone from 
a bass viol, is a familiar sound beside the rivers of Sarawak. 

The remaining semnopithecines (genus Golobus) are Afri- 
can and differ from the Asiatic langurs by the absence of any 

26 




An Old Male Nose Monkey. 



THE AFRICAN GUEREZAS 




The Mountain Guereza. 



thumb. The ten species are found in equatorial Africa, 
and may be called guerezas, after an Abyssinian one long 
known. They vary in length of body from twenty- 

J J i i Guereza. 

one to about thirty inches, and have tails a tenth 
or more longer than the body and more or less tufted at the 
end. Their habits are similar to those of the langurs, and it 
has rarely been 

possible to bring $ SJBB ~ '^^P^P^^fe : .'( ^ s 

one away from its 
native hills. Their 
dense, long- flowing, 
beautifully colored 
hair, however, has 
made their skins 
highly valued by 
the natives and so much in demand in Europe that all these 
monkeys are likely soon to be exterminated. Some are shining 
black, some white and black, some bay or a mixture of these 
tints. The guereza proper is a most striking little animal, for 
its head, body, and limbs are covered with jet-black hair, while 
on each side of the back there arises a line of long white hair 
which hangs down below the flanks, forming a kind of mantle 
of pure white; and the dark face is surrounded with a fringe 
of white hair which forms long Dundreary whiskers on each 
cheek. With these skins the Masai and other East African 
warriors decorated themselves for battle and covered their 
shields. A variety inhabiting the lofty mountains east of Vic- 
toria Nyanza has the tail heavily fringed with long white hair 
that glitters like spun glass, and it is said by the Arabs to take 
great pains to keep this plume and its mantle perfectly clean. 
H. H. Johnston 18 says that besides making headdresses from 
the skin the Mandara warriors affix the flowing yaklike tails be- 
hind their belts as if they grew there. These pendent white 
fringes serve their wearers as a screen against the annoyance 

27 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

of insects when they lie asleep in the tree tops ; and they choose 
sleeping places among the hanging moss where they are prac- 
tically invisible, in spite of their contrasted black-and-white 
coats. 

Turning now to the other group, we meet the common mon- 
keys of Africa, about forty species, many of which are familiar 
in menageries, such as the tiny talpoin, the ascagne, hocheur, 
malbrouck (French names), green monkey, patas, mona, 
and Diana of West Africa, and the East African grivet, so 




The Diana Monkey. 



commonly depicted in the old Egyptian wall paintings. All 
are small, slender, long-limbed, and muscular, and have long 
tails and round heads usually adorned with whiskers and beards 
of formal cut. Their fur is thick and soft, and in most species 
each hair is ringed with different and often brilliant colors; 
and while the predominant hue is blackish or olive-green, 
sometimes bright, the coats of many are gayly marked with 
blue black, red, chestnut, tawny, golden green, bright yellow, 
white, or jet-black, often in quaint spots or stripes, so that they 

28 



GUENONS, MANGABEYS, AND MACAQUES 

are the most ornamental of all the monkey tribe. None, per- 
haps, exceeds in prettiness the mona and Diana, with white 
fronts and well- combed hair and beards. 

The guenons, says Forbes, are entirely confined to Africa, where they 

live entirely in the forest regions, herding together in large troops. "They 

can move from tree to tree with great rapidity, and can climb 

• i r -i • • • i ™, Guenons. 

even on vertical surfaces with surprising quickness. They are 

abrupt and energetic in their movements, restless and noisy, incessantly 
chattering and making grimaces. . . . Their food consists of leaves, birds' 
eggs, and honey, but preeminently of fruits, while they are especially destruc- 
tive to the ripe grain fields of the natives near the woods in which they live. 
. . . The guenons are not only restless but very inquisitive ; they are, there- 
fore, when young very easily tamed and as a consequence they are fre- 
quently to be seen as performers in circuses and exhibitions. When aged 
they are unreliable in temper, and often very ill-dispositioned. They are 
said also to repel with missiles any intruders into the region in which they 
are established in any numbers." 

The mangabeys are a smaller group of West African mon- 
keys, intermediate between the guenons and the macaques, 
but their hairs are not ringed. The half a dozen species are 
blackish or brownish with white markings, the eyelids invari- 
ably white. 

The cercopithecines form a group of rather large, short- 
tailed Old World monkeys, represented by the macaques and 
baboons, whose special mark is the possession of cheek pouches. 

All the macaques are Asiatic except one, — the magot or 
Barbary ape, to be spoken of later. Seventeen species are 
recognized, scattered from Baluchistan to northern 
China and Japan, and southeastward to Timor, 
some widespread, others restricted to a narrow habitat on some 
single island, mountain range, or bit of coast. They vary in 
size from thirteen inches (nose to root of tail) to nearly three 
feet, and the males are always much larger than the females, 
and have bigger canine teeth. The tail is long in a few, but 
short in most, and many have a distensible sac in the throat. 

29 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

They go about in flocks of both sexes and all ages, and are 
active, noisy, like to scramble about rocks, and some swim and 
dive well. Blanford, 19 who describes them extensively, says 
that their food is varied, most or all eating insects and snails, as 
well as seeds, berries, fruits, etc., while one kind feeds entirely 
on crabs and the like gathered at low tide. In some parts of 
India they do great damage in gardens, where they have occa- 
sionally been seen to devour lizards and frogs. All cram the 
food into their cheek pouches- and then hide away to chew it 
at leisure. Their doglike teeth and strong nails are capable 
of inflicting severe wounds, so that old ones are well able to 
defend themselves in the warfare of the jungle. 

The Malayan pig-tailed macaque has "been taught for centuries in the 
East Indies to climb trees and throw down ripe cocoanuts, avoiding green 
ones. The "little, graceful, grimacing rilawa, or bonnet macaque of Ceylon," 
says Tennent, "is the universal pet and favorite of both natives and Euro- 
peans. Tamil conjurers teach it to dance, and . . . carry it from village to 
village, clad in a grotesque dress, to exhibit its lively performances." Of 
the rare leonine macaque of upper Burma, which is black, and has a great 
horseshoe-shaped mane about its head and shoulders, a specimen named 
Sally lived in the London "Zoo" in 1869 and showed extraordinary clever- 
ness. She walked upright with little effort, and carried things thus, and 
would drink out of a bottle or smoke a pipe — relics of her education on 
shipboard. The dried flesh and bones of a Chinese macaque form a mate- 
rial for medicine ; and the Chinese of Formosa invariably chop off the tail 
of the single Formosan species, because, as they explain, it is an insulting 
caricature of their cue. One of their old books informs its readers that the 
macaque has no stomach, but digests its food by jumping about and so 
shaking it up until it is absorbed by the system. The monkey which ap- 
pears so numerously in Japanese bronzes and pictures is a macaque pecul- 
iar to Nippon, where it ranges farther north than any other monkey known, 
and is careless of cold and snow. 

Of all this group the best known is the widespread little 
yellowish Bengal or rhesus monkey, which abounds in north- 
ern India and eastward to China, some living in the high north- 
ern mountains, where they have acquired a thick undercoat of 

30 



TAME MACAQUES 



wool to resist the cold. This monkey is rarely molested by 
the Hindoos, so that around certain temples hundreds will 
come at the call of 
the fakirs to get 
rice and peas; and 
it is the common 
juggler's trickster 
of northern India. 
The Hon - tailed 
macaque is kept 
tame in large num- 
bers by the natives 
of the western coast 
of India, where it 
is considered the 
luckiest thing in the 
world to see one of 
them the first thing 
on awakening in 
the morning ; hence 
their owners carry 
them about with 
them when travel- 





X 


4! 


\ • 

D 







Sanborn, Phot. 



ing, even upon a 



Copyright, X. V. Zool. Society. 

The Bengal or Rhesus Monkey. 
railroad train. 

There remains only the Barbary ape, or magot, which dwells 
in Morocco and Algeria, especially about Constantine, and 
is preserved in a small free band on the Rock of Gibraltar; 
but nobody knows whether it is indigenous or, as is more prob- 
able, was carried thither long ago. The authors of "The 
Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society" of Lon- 
don, written about 1830, mention that this ape "has even estab- 
lished itself on the Rock of Gibraltar, where it is said to have 
become extremely abundant." It is about two and a half 

31 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

feet long, light brown, with the naked parts pinkish, and no 
tail. These apes are interesting historically as furnishing the 

"subjects" used for anatomical study 
in the old days when Aristotle, Galen, 
and other early naturalists and sur- 
geons were forbidden to dissect hu- 
man bodies. 

This brings us to the most repul- 
sive of all the Primates, yet of much 
scientific interest, — the 

Baboons. 

baboons. They number 
Gibraltar ape. about a dozen species, all African 

and Arabian except one, — the jet- 
black, wood-ranging, fruit-eating baboon of the forests of 
Celebes and Betchuan, which, as its habits would suggest, 
stands somewhat intermediate between them and the ma- 
caques. Its lone presence in the East (recalling that of the 
single African macaque) is an example of the many likenesses 
between the faunas of the Africa- Arabian and the Indo-Malayan 
region, and a reminder that in a former era these faunas were one, 
supposedly continuous on lands now lost in the Indian Ocean. 
The African baboons present striking peculiarities in" ap- 
pearance, and all are much alike. In size they vary from the 
bigness of a spaniel to that of a mastiff, and a comparison with 
dogs is apt, for these apes go about habitually on all fours, 
their limbs are stout and of about equal length, and their heads 
and muzzles are canine; hence the ancient name cynocephali, 
dog-headed. In some, as the mandrill, the naked nose is 
swollen at the sides like a hog's snout, thrown into ridges and 
colored black, pale pink, or blue and purple; while the great 
callosities on the stern are of the same or contrasted colors. 

When the beast is enraged or otherwise much excited, these colors glow 
with great brilliancy. It has been observed in the cases of all the apes so 
colored that the red hinder end is a subject of great pride, and that they 

32 



HAUNTS OF BABOONS 

will turn it toward an animal or person with whom they are pleased, or 
toward a mirror when one is placed in their cage. Darwin has much to say 
on this curious circumstance in his "Descent of Man" ; and I recall how one 
of his Arab friends told Burton, 64 during his adventurous journey to Mecca, 
that the Arabian apes catch and kill kites by exposing the pink stern and 
concealing the remainder of their bodies: the bird pounces upon what 
appears to be raw meat, "and presently finds himself viciously plucked 
alive." To our eyes, however, these gaudy naked parts only add to the 
ugliness of all baboons, which their overhanging eyebrows, small eyes, 
ferocious disposition, and filthy habits intensify. 

The fur of the baboons is blackish or greenish or a yellow- 
ish gray, grizzled by the fact that every hair is ringed with 
various colors ; or the coat may be party-colored, the drill, for 
example, having whitish beard and cheeks, and the gelada a 
brown mane and gray chest with a black body. 

Baboons, unlike other monkeys, are denizens of open coun- 
try rather than of forest, and lovers of rocks and deserts, where 
they travel about in large bands. "I shall never forget," re- 
marks Alfred Evans, writing in The Field (London) of the 
chacma of South Africa, " the first time I came across a troop 
of them." 

"This was on an undulating stony range of hillocks, where the spek- 
boom (elephant tree) luxuriates, and the rough spinous crimson -crested 
aloe rears its head to a height of some ten or fifteen feet, often mistaken at 
a distance, by one unaccustomed to their peculiar erectness, for human 
beings, having the appearance of solitary sentinels keeping guard in the 
unbroken stillness of a vast wilderness. This is the natural home of the 
baboon; here he finds his most delectable food, succulent roots and bulbs, 
beetles, scorpions, centipedes. His living prey, his tit-bits, he hunts and 
rummages for amongst the myriads of loose stones that lie about in every 
direction; these he cautiously and gently rolls over with one hand, then 
pounces on his unsuspecting victims with the other. His sight is so keen 
and his grasp so unerring that nothing escapes — not the minutest larva 
or most agile insect. 

"In times of drought, when driven by hunger, I have known them do 
a vast amount of havoc among young lambs and kids ... his object is not 
meat, but milk. His method of procedure is this: Finding a lamb or kid 
» 33 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Chacma. 



curled up asleep, as is their custom on a windy or sunny day after a good 
swig at the maternal fount, he secures him in his merciless grip, at once lays 
hold of the stomach, and with a wrench of his powerful arms tears it open." 

The sense of smell in this species is amazingly keen, espe- 
cially for hidden water springs in the desert. It is recorded 
that the Bushmen of the Kalahari plains used to 
train captives to help them search for water when 
famine was impending; and undoubtedly the observation of 
what roots, etc., these animals were accustomed to eat, taught the 
earliest human venturers into these regions what might be found 
there in the way of food. Le Vaillant, a French naturalist 
who wandered and wrote in South Africa from 1781 to 1785, 
had a tame chacma whose intelligent and amusing behavior 
he ascribes at length in his " Voyage. " He says: "When he 
found any fruit or roots unknown to my Hottentots, we never 

touched them until my dear Kees [the 
chacma] had first tested them; if it 
refused them, we judged them to be 
either disagreeable or dangerous, and 
threw them away." One method 
Kees had of uprooting any plant 
which resisted an ordinary pull was 
to seize the tuft of leaves with his 
teeth as close to the ground as he 
could, then throw his heels over his 
head, giving a jerk that always suc- 
ceeded. The favorite food on the 
southwest coast is that extraordinary 
plant, the Welwitschia. Baboons also eat lizards and the like, 
and are fond of honey and certain gums. With these habits 
it is not surprising that they are everywhere exceedingly 
harmful to plantations, tearing up or trampling down more 
than they consume, and destroying a field in a night. Hence 
they are hated and persecuted by white and negro farmers 

34 




Mandrill. 



BABOONS AS FIGHTERS 

alike, and baboon hunts are a regular thing among the 
colonists. 

As to their courage and fighting prowess, various accounts 
are given. They go in bands, sometimes exceeding one hun- 
dred individuals of all ages, and choose for their lairs cliffs and 
rocky ridges full of crevices and thickets, such as the extraor- 
dinary Black Rocks of Angola, where the yellow Yellow 
baboon dwells in thousands, and subsists mainly on Baboon - 
lichens. In such places they are safe against any enemies 
except leopards (which the old males are said to be able to 
vanquish), and the larger serpents or birds of prey; and these 
can make away only with the young now and then. Dogs 
dare not attack full-sized baboons, which have been seen again 
and again going fearlessly to the aid of some little one that 
dogs have "treed" on a rock. G. A. Henty, whose sto- 
ries have been the delight of so many boys and girls, and 
who accompanied the British Expedition to Abyssinia in 1868, 
has written in his "March to Magdala " amusing accounts 
of their battles with dogs and other doings. Although the 
negroes, especially the women, have an inordinate fear of them, 
trustworthy evidence of their ever having attacked a man, 
except in defense of their young, is not at hand. A band will, 
however, roll or throw stones or anything else they can get 
hold of against intruders, and their aim is distressingly true. 

In Volume I of "Cassell's Natural History," where Pro- 
fessor P. Martin Duncan has given an extended account of all 
the baboons, including much history and odd fable, the fol- 
lowing paragraph occurs in reference to the big, lion-maned 
geladas (Theropithecus) of southern Abyssinia: — 

"They descend and sometimes rob the farmers with impunity, and re- 
turn after having committed a vast amount of mischief. But it happens 
that the great dog-faced troops are out on the same errand, and the two sets 
of thieves speedily disagree. A fight ensues, and the geladas roll down 
great stones which the others try to avoid, and then they all rush together 
to close quarters, making a great uproar, and fighting with great fury- 

35 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Some of these gallant geladas had the audacity to stop a Serene Highness 
(a Duke of Saxe-Gotha) in his travels in Abyssinia ... by rolling down 
stones in such quantity and of such a size that not only had the firing party 
to retire, but the passage of the caravan was stopped." 

Some of these baboons are as tamable and teachable as 
other monkeys, but as they grow old they become unruly and 
Sacred subject to dangerous fits of rage. Professor Dun- 

Baboon. can ' s treatise just referred to, and the books of 
Broderip, 15 Blanford, 23 and others record the feats of various 
learned baboons in menageries and elsewhere. They were 
tamed and trained anciently in Egypt, where a religious sect 
held the shaggy Arabian species (C. hamadryas) to be sacred 
to Thoth, — a deity who held a similar place in their pantheon 
to that occupied by Hermes or Mercury among the Greeks or 
Romans, as god of the moon and patron of letters. 

"Sometimes," we are told by Wilkinson, 58 "a cynocephalus, placed on 
a throne as a god, holds a sacred ibis in his hand; and in the judgment 
scenes of the dead it frequently occurs seated on the summit of a balance, 
as the emblem of Thoth, who had an important office on that occasion, and 
registered the account of the actions of the deceased. The place where 
this animal was particularly sacred was Hermopolis, the city of Thoth. 
In the necropolis of the capital of upper Egypt a particular part was set 
apart as the cemetery of the sacred apes." A very full and critical account 
of what the ancient Egyptians, and after them their European conquerors, 
knew and thought of these baboons, and of many other apes and monkeys 
trained by them, is contained in Anderson's "Zoology of Egypt." 55 

The sacred baboons are large, with a straight, long, ridged 
muzzle, deeply set eyes, the face and other naked parts flesh- 
pink, and the coat ash-gray. The males have a heavy mane 
on the shoulders and long thick whiskers. Ehrenberg asserts 
that the style of wearing the hair common to the ancient people 
of the lower Nile and to the Abyssinians and Sudanese of to- 
day, was copied, as a sign of adoration, from the mane of this 
beast; and that the monumental structure in the desert near 
Cairo, the Sphinx, is modeled after the same animal god. 

36 



MONKEYS OF SOUTH AMERICA 

In the monkeys of America we have, as has been stated, a 
broad-nosed type differing from their relatives of Africa and 
x\sia ; and it is a more ancient and an inferior type. American 
The group is divisible into two families, — the Hapa- Monke y s - 
lidae, or marmosets, with thirty-two teeth, and the Cebidae 
with thirty-six teeth. "The former include the marmosets 
(Hapale) and the tamarins (Midas). The latter comprise 
the capuchins (Cebus), which may be taken as the representa- 
tive genus of American monkeys, the woolly monkeys (Lago- 
thrix), the spider monkeys (Ateles and the allied Eriodes), the 
howlers (Mycetes), the sakis (Pithecia and Brachyurus), the 
night monkeys or douroucolis (Nyctipithecus), and the squir- 
rel monkeys or saimiris (Chrysothrix) with the allied Cal- 
lithrix. " 

The forests of equatorial South America are the headquar- 
ters of the tribe, and the exclusive home of many species, some 
of which are restricted to narrow areas, the great rivers often 
acting as impassable boundaries. No monkeys ascend high 
in the Andes, or reach the West Coast ; and none is found south 
of the forests of Brazil or north of south-central Mexico. Fos- 
sil remains of monkeys are rare everywhere, and known in the 
New World only from the Santa Cruz Miocene formations 
of Patagonia ; and they show no more kinship with Old World 
types than do the existing species. 

American monkeys are all small, the largest having a body 
no more than twenty inches long, while some are no bigger 
than young kittens. One baby is born to each pair each year 
as a rule. All are very hairy or woolly, and none has naked 
callosities. Adapted to a continuous life in trees, most of them 
are provided with prehensile tails — that is, the tip is muscu- 
lar and almost automatically curls around whatever it touches. 

"This prehensile tail," wrote Waterton, '-'is a most curious thing. It 
has been denominated very appropriately a fifth hand. It is of manifest 

37 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

advantage to the animal either when sitting in repose on the branch of a 
tree, or when in its journey onwards in the gloomy recesses of the wilder- 
ness. You may see this [spider] monkey catching hold of the branches 
with its hands, and at the same moment twisting its tail around one of them 
as if in want of additional support; and this prehensile tail is sufficiently 
strong to hold the animal in its place, even when all its four limbs are de- 
tached from the tree, so that it can swing to and fro and amuse itself 
solely through the instrumentality of its prehensile tail, which, by the way, 
would be of no manner of use to it did accident or misfortune force the 
monkey to take up a temporary abode on the ground." 

Nevertheless, as Dr. Lydekker remarks, since the teetees have no pre- 
hensibility in the tail, and others, as ooakaris, lack a tail of practicable 
length, it is clear that the prehensile organ must be regarded as a kind of 
luxury. "Indeed," as he observes, "the whole question as to the reason 
why some monkeys have long tails, others short tails, and others again no 
tails at all, is involved in great obscurity." But that is true of many other 
features of animal structure and economy more important than tails ! 




Copyright, N. Y..Z06I. Society. 

A Capuchin. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



The most famil- 
iar and character- 
istic of the American 
monkeys are the 
capuchins or sapa- 
jous of the genus 
Cebus, eighteen spe- 
cies of which are 
catalogued between 
Paraguay and Costa 
Rica, though none 
wanders throughout 
this wide range, and 
only one is known 
in Central America ; 
but they are so 
closely alike in 
structure and hab- 
its, and so variable 



38 



HABITS OF CAPUCHIN MONKEYS 

in color, that nobody knows how many true species really exist. 
The body is rather stout ; the head round and the muzzle short, 
giving a miniature and somewhat pathetic caricature of the 
human countenance; the hair is not woolly, and it 

Capuchins. 

stands up over the forehead like a monk's cowl, but 
sometimes forms a crest ; and the tail is long and prehensile, 
but not naked on the under side of the end. The color is 
usually a variable dull brown, but one is reddish, and several 
have more or less white about the shoulders. 

These monkeys go in small, orderly troops, led in single file by 
an old male and remain mostly in tall trees, sometimes one hun- 
dred and fifty feet above the ground. Bates, 25 whose "Naturalist 
on the Amazons" is a storehouse of information on these and 
other animals of that region, describes how, when the foremost of 
the flock reaches the outermost branch of a tall tree, he springs 
forth into the air without a moment's hesitation, and alights 
on the dome of yielding foliage belonging to the neighboring 
tree, maybe fifty feet beneath, all the rest following his ex- 
ample. "They grasp, on falling, with hands and tail, right 
themselves in a moment, and then away they go along branch 
and bough to the next tree." A Chilean species will hang by 
the tail from a branch at a dizzy height, balance itself with all 
four limbs stretched out, then drop twenty or thirty feet and 
stop by seizing another branch with its tail. They usually 
have a settled sleeping-place, whence they issue every morn- 
ing to explore the near-by trees for fruits, tender shoots, in- 
sects, eggs, young birds, and other edibles; and go and come 
by regular routes through the woods. Bananas are their main- 
stay, but oranges are a favorite delicacy, and these are opened 
by tearing the rind, too bitter for their taste, with the nails, 
and then scooping out the pulp with the forefinger. Their 
fondness of sweets is taken advantage of by the forest people 
to entrap them. The pulp of a gourd is dug out through a 
small hole, sugar is placed inside, and the trap is set out and 

39 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

watched. Presently a monkey discovers it, thrusts in his hand, 
and soon gets so busy and so much enjoys his feast that he 
will suffer himself to be caught sooner than forego the handful 
of sugar which he cannot pull out so long as his fist is closed. 
Precisely the same plan, with a cocoanut for a trap and rice 
for bait, is used to catch monkeys and other animals in the 
Far East. 

When captured old, capuchins are likely to mope, refuse 
food, and die; but the young become tame and interesting. 
They are hardy, and most of the organ grinders' monkeys of 
both continents belong to this group and are mainly "weepers," 
whose fur is golden brown, with a blackish line extending 
backward from the nose to the shoulders, and the face and fore 
parts generally pale yellow. They are greatly attached to their 
masters and to any animal friends; and in Paraguay, are 
usually brought up with a young dog on whose back they ride 
half the time. Their intelligence and quickness to learn is 
great; for instance, they contrive, after the surprise of a 
failure or two, to open an egg and eat it without spilling a drop. 
But like most monkeys they are filled with a spirit of mischief 
and are expert thieves. An excellent anecdote was recorded 
by Professor Cope, who had two of these monkeys in his house 
in 1872, and had the temerity to call them "Jack and Jim, 
the sons of Cebidae. " 

"Jack displays a thousand traits of monkey ingenuity. He is an ad- 
mirable catcher, seldom missing anything, from a large brush to a grain, 
using two hands or one. His cage door is fastened by two hooks, and these 
are kept in their places by nails driven in behind them. He generally 
finds means sooner or later of drawing out the nails, unhooking the hooks, 
and getting free. He then occupies himself in breaking up various objects 
and examining their interior appearances, no doubt in search of food. To 
prevent his escape, I fastened him by a leather strap to the slats of the cage, 
but he soon untied the knot, and then relieved himself of the strap by cut- 
ting and drawing out the threads which held the flaps for the buckle. He 
then used the strap in a novel way. He was accustomed to catch his food 

40 




HI AMERICAN MONKEYS 

VARIEGATED SPIDER-MONKEY 

SMOOTH-HEADED CAPUCHIN 

RED-FOOTED NIGHT MONKEY 



GEOFFROY S TAMARIN 
RED HOWLER 



CLEVERNESS AND MISCHIEF 

(bread, potatoes, fruit, etc.) with his hands, when thrown to him. Some- 
times the pieces fell short three or four feet. One day he seized his strap 
and began to throw it at the food, retaining his hold of one end. He took 
pretty correct aim, and finally drew the pieces to within reach of his hand. 
This performance he constantly repeats, hooking and pulling the articles 
to him, in turns and loops of the strap. Sometimes he loses his hold of 
the strap. If the poker is handed to him he uses that with some skill in 
the recovery of the strap. When this is drawn in he secures his food as 
before. 

"Here is an act of intelligence which must have been originated by some 
monkey, since no lower or ancestral type possesses the hand necessary for 
its accomplishment. Whether originated by Jack, or by some ancestor of 
the forest who used vines for the same purpose, cannot be readily ascer- 
tained." 

Their smart doings as pets, and individuality, are the theme 
of innumerable stories. Belt 26 descants upon the human-like 
behavior of a white-fronted capuchin he kept a long time : — 

"He had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff 
bark to a shrill whistle ; and we could tell by them, without seeing him, when 
it was he was hungry, eating, frightened, or menacing; doubtless one of his 
own species would have understood various minor shades of intonation and 
expression that we, not entering into his feelings and wants, passed over 
as unintelligible." 

Closely related to the capuchins are the barrigudos, capar- 
ros, or woolly monkeys, which are of bulky form and clothed in 
a woolly under fur; the tail is long, prehensile, naked beneath, 
and exceedingly sensitive. They are slow, exclusively fru- 
givorous, are eaten by the Indians with great gusto, and "are 
great favorites, from their grave countenances, which resemble 
the human face more than those of any other monkey, their 
quiet manners, and the great affection and docility they ex- 
hibit." Some rare species of southeastern Brazil connect them 
with the next genus, — the spider monkeys. 

These light, slender, exceedingly active and agile monkeys, 
called "coaitas" by the Brazilians, are among the most wide- 

4* 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

spread and familiar of all the American tribe, and are regarded 
as the most advanced in organization. The prehensile tail 
spider nere reacnes its highest perfection, as well as all other 

Monkeys. organs which adapt the animal to a purely arboreal 
existence. Bates 25 has much to say in support of this view, and 
tells many interesting things of them — among others how fond 
the Indians are of them as pets. "The disposition of the coaita," 
he says, "is mild in the extreme; it has none of the painful 




Black Spider Monkey. 



restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the 
surly, untamable temper of its nearer relatives, the Mycetes, 
or howling monkeys." Of the ten species of spider monkey, 
the two best known in South America are the variegated, whose 
coat is a handsome mixture of black, white, and orange-yellow ; 
the red-faced black one, so common as a pet in the Guiana 
villages, and often taken abroad ; and the large white-whiskered 
one, the eating of which is so graphically described by Hum- 
boldt 60 ; but all the kinds are a favorite flesh with the Indians 
and enjoyed well roasted by most white men : Bates found it 

42 



USING FRUITS AS WEAPONS 

like beef, but sweeter and richer. From the Isthmus of Panama 
to northern Nicaragua one sees everywhere in the tops of the 
forest trees Geoffrey's varicolored spider monkey rushing about 
in bands and hunting for insects and fruit. One of the trees 
most frequented is the "nispera," a gutta-percha-yielding kind 
which bears a round fruit about the size of an apple, hard and 
heavy when green. When Belt was living in Nicaragua he soon 
learned to avoid these trees when monkeys were there. 

"Sometimes they lay quite quiet until I was passing underneath, when, 
shaking a branch of the nispera tree, they would send down a shower of 
the hard round fruit; but fortunately I was never struck by them. As 
soon as I looked up, they would commence yelping and barking and put- 
ting on the most threatening gestures, breaking off pieces of branches and 
letting them fall, and shaking off more fruit, but never throwing anything, 
simply letting it fall. [Other observers have recorded that they threw 
sticks, etc.] . . . Sometimes a female would be seen carrying a young one 
on its back, to which it clung with legs and tail, the mother making its way 
along the branches, and leaping from tree to tree, apparently but little in- 
cumbered by its baby. A large black and white eagle is said to prey upon 
them, but I never saw one." 26 

A closely similar species is common in Guatemala, and north- 
ward as far as San Louis Potosi in Mexico. The howlers, 
arguatoes, or alluates are the largest and most 

Howlers. 

powerful of South American apes and the dullest, 
and are peculiar in having no thumb or only a rudimentary one, 
and in having the hyoid bones in the throat (of males only) widely 
enlarged and cavernous, so as to form a curious hollow organ, 
by which their voice is so increased as to be audible two miles. 
Their colors are usually blackish or brown, although one is 
brick-red ; but there is much variability, and in some of the 
half-dozen species the sexes differ from one another in dress, 
and the young from both. They feed chiefly on leaves and 
fruit, and are seminocturnal in habit, wandering about in small 
parties and giving their " harrowing roar" late in the evening 
and again early in the morning, or when rain impends; sup- 

43 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Sakis. 



posedly to intimidate their enemies, such as wild-cats, tree 
serpents, and such birds of prey as the harpy eagle, but there 
is no evidence that any one of these is at all frightened by the 
noise. Humboldt and other early writers believed that big 
bands must assemble and howl in chorus ; but Wallace showed 
by his own studies, and by the unanimous testimony of the 
Indians, that one individual alone makes the roar, which he 
describes as of remarkable depth and volume. Waterton 
vividly portrays the effect on the traveler's mind as he lies in 
his hammock in the forest and listens to these unearthly cries. 
The Indians hate the howlers, finding them too dull and sullen 
to tame, and so kill them for food, to sell their hides to white 
traders, or for the sake of the long hair, which is twisted into 
cordage and otherwise utilized. 

Coming to the sakis and ooakaris (or "yarkees"), we find 
a group with non-prehensile tails and the incisor teeth inclined 
forward. The sakis (Pithecia) have long, bushy tails, 
the hair on the head long and parted in the middle, 
and a thick beard ; the body is not large. They are very delicate, 
so that it is rarely one can be kept long alive, nor is it often 

attempted, for they 
are uninteresting 
and likely to be 
cross as captives. 
Of the five species 
none are very well 
known ; the largest 
is the black cuxio, 
and the most strik- 
ing is the rare 
white - nosed saki, 
whose face is scarlet except the white end of its nose. 

The three species of ooakaris are quaint little monkeys with 
very short tails, and their light-colored silky coats set off by a 

44 




Black Saki, Cuxio, or Satan Monkey. 



NIGHT MONKEYS AND TEE TEES 

scarlet face, which in one — the bald ooakari — extends into 
a very high forehead ; but this one has a black face. All are 
diurnal, scrambling about the high tree tops of the forests of 
the upper Amazons, and nowhere numerous. 

Still another group embraces the related night monkeys, tee- 
tees, and squirrel monkeys. All these are "small and elegant 
animals, covered with long hair, and having long, Night 
bushy tails, which are not prehensile, although they Monke y s - 
can be curled around a branch." The night monkeys, owl 
monkeys or douroucolis (Nyctipithecus), have a short, thick 
body, clothed with prettily varied fur, a round head and round- 
ish face encircled by a whitish ruff ; and their enormous yellow 
eyes, betokening their nocturnal habits, give an owlish expres- 
sion to the countenances. "They sleep all day long in hollow 
trees," to quote Bates again, "and come forth to prey on insects 
and fruits only in the night ; . . . [and] are aroused by the least 
noise, so that when a person passes by the tree in which a num- 
ber of them are concealed, he is startled by the sudden appari- 
tion of a group of little striped faces crowding a hole in the 
trunk." Alston 114 was informed that the Central American 
species (N. trivirgatus) lived in small parties or families which 
remained concealed in the tops of the trees during the day, 
often hidden in heaps of sticks and dead leaves which are per- 
haps collected by themselves. At nightfall they come forth to 
feed, but seldom seem to wander far, returning regularly to the 
same places, especially in search of the fruit of the guava. Dur- 
ing the darkness they continually utter a low cry sounding like 
douroucou, feebly pronounced. They are not often kept as pets, 
but are interesting and gentle when carefully treated, as may 
be seen by reading the experience of Olive Thorne Miller, 
related in Harper's Magazine for July, 1886. The cries of all 
these night monkeys are like those of a cat, and they hiss when 
angry. 

The teetees (Callithrix), on the other hand, although differ- 

45 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

ing from the night monkeys in little except in having bristly 
hairs among the fur, smaller eyes and more bushy tails, are 
"diurnal animals, arboreal and gregarious, noisy and agile, 
living on fruit, insects, birds' eggs, and even small birds. They 
range all over South America, from Panama to the southern 
limits of the forested regions." They are dull-witted and 
rarely tamed. There are a dozen or so species, mostly grizzled 
red or else black with red and white markings. 

The squirrel monkeys, or "saimiris," are a small group much 
like these teetees, — looking truly like squirrels, — and very nu- 
Teetees merous from Costa Rica to Bolivia. The commonest 

r3 d Mon- ir " one ^ s ov ^ about ten inches long, but its tail meas- 
keys. ures f our teen inches; and is yellowish gray with a 

dark head and a comical little black-and-white face with tufted 
white ears. Baron Humboldt thought no other monkey had so 
much the physiognomy of a child ; its sudden 'changes from joy 
to sorrow, and vice versa, were very infantile, and when seized 
with fear its eyes became suffused with tears. One that Hum- 
boldt had was extremely fond of spiders and insects, and would 
try to pick up figures of wasps, etc., when shown them in a 
book, although uncolored. The same story of eager recogni- 
tion of a picture is told of the silky tamarin by Geoffroy St.- 
Hilaire. They will steadfastly watch the mouth of a person 
speaking, and if allowed to sit on their master's shoulder will 
frequently touch his lips, tongue, or teeth. They live in large 
flocks, and in a rain sit huddled in close groups, with their 
tails wrapped around each other, and are so miserable that 
then the Indians have no difficulty in shooting them with their 
small poisoned darts. 

This brings us to the end of the family Cebidae, and there 
remains only the small family Hapalidae, characterized dis- 
Marmo- tinctively by having only thirty-two teeth, and includ- 
sets * ing the tiny tamarins and marmosets, which are 

hardly separable and connect the monkeys with the lemurs. 

4 6 



CARE OF CAPTIVE MONKEYS 

There are a large number of kinds, showing considerable 
variety in color, from silvery gray to black or white and black, 
or yellowish or reddish tints, and in several the long, almost 
bushy tail is ringed. The fur is soft and the general look is 
that of a kitten, but some have manes, or mustaches, resembling 
balls of cotton, or long whiskers brushed straight back, or ears 
prettily fringed. Their actions are much like those of squirrels, 
but they can rarely be seen or studied wild in the dense forest, 
for they stay in the high tree tops. Most of what we know of 
them, therefore, has been gained by their captivity, where 
they make charming but exceedingly delicate pets. South 
Americans carry them about sometimes in the folds of their 
hair. 

The Indians get them by trapping, or else by shooting the 
mother with blow-gun darts, and finding two or three babies 
clinging to her fallen body. The one best known and most 
often exported is obtained only in the island of Mara jo, at the 
mouth of the Amazon. None exceeds a foot long, and the 
pygmy marmoset is the smallest known monkey, its body meas- 
uring only six inches. All writers on South American zoology 
have much to say of these attractive little creatures, especially 
Bates; and in The Field (of London) for April, and May, 1881, 
will be found an entertaining as well as valuable series of articles 
by Dr. Arthur Stradling on the habits of these and of many 
other Brazilian monkeys. William T. Hornaday, Director of 
the New York "Zoo," gives the following authoritative advice 
as to the care of monkeys in captivity : — 

"The temperature should be 75 degrees, kept as even as possible. 
Food: boiled rice or tapioca, baked or boiled potatoes, ripe bananas or 
apples; a little raw meat, finely chopped; dried or parched sweet corn 
that is easily chewed ; a little stale bread ; occasionally a small raw onion. 
Permit no teasing; feed regularly, water frequently, and keep the cages 
clean. When monkeys become ill, carefully ascertain their trouble, then 
treat them the same as one would sick children." 

47 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

In the late Tertiary formations of. various parts of Europe 
have been found remains of several extinct monkeys and bab- 
Fossii Pri- oons, ancestral to those of the present day ; and in 
mates. Madagascar occur fossil lemurs, one of which 

(Megaladapis) was as large as the gorilla, with limbs remark- 
ably massive and powerful. The early Tertiary rocks of North 
America have yielded various extinct Primates (Adapis, Notharc- 
tus, Anaptomorphus, etc.), more or less intermediate between 
monkeys and lemurs, and indicating that these two great divi- 
sions of the Primate stock were not then widely separated. 
Then as now this stock was adapted to arboreal life, and dis- 
tinguished from the contemporary ancestors of carnivores and 
insectivores by the opposable thumb and great toe, nails instead 
of claws upon fingers and toes, and by various dental peculiari- 
ties. But the divergence was by no means so great as now, and 
in the preceding Cretaceous all three no doubt were merged in 
a single primitive stock. 

Lemurs and their Kin 

The second and inferior division of the Primates is that of 
the lemurs (Lemuroidea) , a large group of queer, interesting 
little animals now found only in Madagascar, tropical Africa, 
and the Orient. This widely scattered distribution is so pe- 
culiar that it could not be accounted for until paleontologists 
began, about i860, to report the discovery of fossil remains 
of lemurs not only in Africa, Europe, and northern India, but 
in the rocks of the western United States, showing that at the 
beginning of the Tertiary period the progenitors of these animals 
were scattered all over the globe, which was then much warmer 
in climate than now. Those forerunners of the group show 
many resemblances to the primitive Insectivora. Change of 
climate and other reasons caused them to become extinct, in 
most parts of the world, and at last to survive only in the two 

48 



A SPECTER OF THE WOODS 



tropical regions mentioned, especially Madagascar, where the 
stock seems to have originated, and where they have never had 
many active enemies. 

Lemurs are distinguished from the monkeys (Anthropoidea) 
by the openness of the bony socket of the eye, the elongated 
jaws, giving a foxlike aspect to the face, the sim- 
plicity of the brain, and other anatomical features 
betokening a lower grade of structure and intelligence. The 
group falls very naturally into three families: Tarsiidae, Chi- 
romyidae, and Lemuridae, of which the first and second con- 
tain only one species each, 
and the third and lowest all 
the remainder, i.e. the le- 
murs proper, or ' ' half -apes. ' ' 

The spectral tarsier, rep- 
resenting the first family, is 
a most extraordinary little 
creature, inhabiting the low- 
land forests of the islands 
from Sumatra to the south- 
ern Philippines, where it is 
called "malmag." It is no 

larger than a small rat, is light brown, has a large head with 
immense brown eyes, a short muzzle, pricked-up ears, and 
a comical grinning expression on its broad face. The tail is 
long and tufted. The hind legs are longer than the front ones, 
owing to the greatly lengthened heel bones (tarsi) ; and these 
and all the paws are hairless, and terminate in long bony 
digits which have pads beneath their ends. By these pads the 
animal is enabled to climb smooth bamboos, like a tree frog, 
which it resembles in its way of sitting, and in its gait on the 
few occasions when it descends from the tree tops. It lies hid- 
den during the day in some hole in a trunk or under the roots 
of a tree, and at night hunts for insects or lizards, especially the 
e 49 




MALMAG. OR TARSiER. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



latter. Cumming 39 kept one in a cage and found it gentle, 
affectionate, extremely cleanly, and with many pretty ways; 
and when its single young one was born it carefully concealed 
the baby from view, when it was nursing it, and carried it 
around in its mouth like a cat. 

The malmag's nearest relative is the even more extraordinary 
aye-aye of eastern Madagascar, alone representing the family 
Chiromyidae, and having much the appearance of a 
small, big-eyed squirrel with a weasel's face. The 
teeth are curiously squirrel-like, too, there being no canines, 
and the incisors large and of continuous growth; while the 



Aye-aye. 




The Madagascar Aye-aye. 



total number is only eighteen. Its fur is long and blackish, 
with yellowish white about the face, chest, and under parts. 
The hind feet are monkeylike, but the hands terminate in 
long bony fingers with birdlike claws, and the fourth finger is 
much more slender and elongated than the others. This curi- 
ous finger aids it in pulling grubs out of holes, scooping out the 
pulp of fruits, and keeping itself clean — a process to which 
captive specimens devote much time, hanging by their hind 

50 



DENTITION OF LEMURS 

legs to make their toilet conveniently. It is entirely nocturnal 
and arboreal in its habits, which have been most fully described 
by Baron 40 and by Lydekker. 05 One of the most interesting 
facts is, that the female constructs in a tree a special and elegant 
globular nest as a nursery for the care of her single offspring. 
Nothing whatever is known of the ancestry of this remark- 
able little creature, but it is evidently a survivor of a very ancient 
type. 

The lemurs proper (family Lemuridag) are characterized by 
thick woolly fur, a doglike muzzle, and the form of the teeth. 
In the center of the upper jaw there is always a toothless gap, 
or diastema, on each side of which the teeth are arranged ac- 
cording to the following formula : 1. 1, C. \, P. f, M. f, =36. 

This formula is the customary way of stating mammalian dentition, 
and it means that on each side of the jaw there are, of incisors (I.) two 
above and two below; of canines (C.) one above and one below; of pre- 
molars (P.) and molars (M.) three and three; — that is/eighteen teeth in 
all on one side of the face, or thirty-six for the total dentition. 

The endrinas, however, have teeth: 1. f, C.j-^, P.f,M.f, = 32 
or 30 in number. In the upper jaw the incisors are small and 
perpendicular; but in the lower, where they are long and nar- 
row, they protrude horizontally in front. The forty-five species 
in the family are separable into four groups: (1) the endrinas, 
sifakas, avahis, and woolly lemurs; (2) the "true" or typical le- 
murs; (3) the chirogales; and (4) the pottos, aye-aye, and loris. 

The endrinas number five species, all of Madagascar, and 
the largest species, called "babakoto," is one of the best-known 
animals on the eastern coast, where the traveler 

Babakoto. 

hears its "doleful, doglike howls " from morning 
until night — an unusual thing among these secretive animals. 
It has a head shaped like that of a miniature bear, the face 
naked, and, like its paws, brownish black ; its dark upper parts 
often reddish ; while the whiskers, forearms, rump, small tuft 

5 1 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



of a tail and ankles, are white. It rarely comes to the ground, 
spending its time moving about in high trees with its fellows 
and living principally on fruit and leaves, yet often catching 
birds in order to eat their brains. The silky-haired, monkey- 
like sifakas, which are white with reddish and black markings, 
are more generally distributed over Madagascar, and are ex- 
ceedingly pretty, but delicate, inactive, and morose in captivity. 
True or typical lemurs (Lemurinae) have rounded heads, fox- 
like muzzles with thirty-two teeth, small ears, and a soft, thick, 

and woolly fur often ele- 
gantly tinted. They range 
in size from that of a cat 
to that of a squirrel, vary 
much in color, and are 
confined to Madagascar. 
These run about on the 
limbs of trees on all fours, 
but on the ground walk 
erect on their hind legs, 
and are capable of very 
agile jumping. Nearly all 
are diurnal but most active 
toward evening, and very 
noisy. Only one or two 
young are born at a time, 
and these are carried about 
by the mother, at first cling- 
ing to her breast, but later 
riding on her back. Lemurs 
are easily kept, readily breed in menageries, and one of the 
most interesting is the ring-tailed, or "Madagascar cat," gray, 
with the long tail ringed in black and white. Like the others, 
it is not scattered generally over the island, but lives only on 
the slippery seaside cliffs, scrambling about rocks where not 

5 2 




Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Soc. 

Ruffed Lemur 



Sanborn, Phot. 



GALA GO PRANKS 

even barefooted men can walk, its long, smooth, leathery 
palms, channeled with suckerlike grooves, enabling it to go 
safely. The ruffed lemur of northeastern Madagascar is the 
largest of this race, in some of whose species the males are black 
while their mates are red. The hattocks, gentle lemurs, and 
sportive lemurs are allied genera. 

Next come the galagos and their relatives, widely distributed 
in central Africa, but unknown in Madagascar. They are small, 
have a rather short muzzle, large, membranous, 

& Galagos. 

folding ears, small eyes set close together, fingers 
and toes very long and slender, thick, soft grayish fur, and a 
bushy tail. The night is their hunting time, for they sleep by 
day in holes in trees or in leaf nests, differing in model with the 
species. Every one comments on their power of folding or 
crumpling their batlike ears. Sir John Kirk says of the great 
galago, or " palm-rat " of the Mozambique coast, that the rapidity 
and length of its leaps are extraordinary, and that it adheres 
where it alights " as if it were a lump of wet clay." An examina- 
tion of the pads beneath the balls of its toes would have shown 
Sir John why. It has a great fondness for palm wine, and 
whenever it can get at an open jar of it will get ingloriously 
tipsy; and many are arrested and condemned to jail in some 
dealer's cage following such a spree. As pets, however, they 
are entertaining only after dark, hiding during daylight in 
their sleeping boxes. Mr. Bartlett 41 turned a galago loose in 
his room one evening, and learned something. 

"Judge my utter astonishment to see him on the floor, jumping about 
upright like a kangaroo, only with much greater speed and intelligence. 
The little one sprung from the ground on to the legs of tables, arms of 
chairs, and, indeed, on to any piece of furniture in the room; in fact, he 
was more like a sprite than the best pantomimist I ever saw. What sur- 
prised me most was his entire want of fear of dogs and cats. These he 
boldly met and jumped on at once, and in the most playful manner hugged 
and tumbled about with them, rolling over and over, hanging on their tails, 
licking them on the head and face. ... He was delighted with a little 

53 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

wooden ball which he rolled about and played with for a considerable time, 
carrying it in one hand while he hopped and skipped about in high 
glee. He eats fruits, sweetmeats, bread, and any kind of animal substance, 
killing everything he can pounce upon and overpower." 

The mouse lemurs, dwarf lemurs, and fat-tailed lemurs are 
groups of many diminutive species closely allied to the galagos, 
but confined to Madagascar. They have been particularly 
described by Forsyth- Major, 42 Grandidier, 43 and other students 
of the curious zoology of that great and ancient island. One 
very peculiar thing about them is their habit of going into a 
dormant state during the hot and dry seasons, curled up in 
their nests just as a northern animal does in its hibernation. 
They go in very fat, subsist by absorption of this stored tissue, 
and when the rainy season awakens the tropical world, they 
come out thin and weak to enjoy renewed life. The act and 
its cause are thus the same as the winter sleep of northern 
animals. 

Lastly, something must be said about the "slow" lemurs 
(Lorisinae), of which two species, the angwantibo and potto, 
Pottos and are West African, and two, the slender and the slow 
Lons loris, are East Indian. Both are small (eight to 

fifteen inches long), have soft woolly fur variously colored, a 
triangular face with very large and staring eyes close together? 
almost no tail, and strangely misshapen hands and feet. They 
are nocturnal and, in strong contrast with most of their race, are 
perhaps the most sluggish of all mammals — the very embodi- 
ment of seeming laziness. They live in trees, climbing about 
with extreme caution and deliberation, in search of insects, 
leaves, fruits, birds' eggs, and similar food; but old Bosman 
evidently exaggerated when he wrote in 1704 of the potto of 
the Gold Coast: — 

"Some Writers affirm that when this Creature has climbed upon a 
Tree, he doth not leave it until he hath eaten up not only the Fruit, but 
the leaves intirely ; and then descends fat and in very good case in order to 

54 



GHOSTS AXD OMENS 

get up into another Tree; but before his slow pace can compass this, he 
becomes as poor and lean as 'tis possible to imagine : And if the trees be 
high, or the way anything distant, and he meets with nothing on his journey, 
he inevitably dies of Hunger, betwixt one tree and the other. Thus 'tis 
represented by others, but I will not undertake for the Truth of it. . . . 
I know nothing more of this Animal, than that 'tis impossible to look on 
him without Horrour, and that he hath nothing very particular but his 
odious Ugliness." 

In the evening a loris will sometimes get up energy enough to 
rise on its hind legs and then fall forward on an insect ; and one 
placed on the ground may be forced into a wavering kind of 
trot. The Oriental slow loris chatters when angry, and when 
pleased utters a short though tuneful whistle thought by Chi- 
nese sailors, who take them to sea, to denote the coming of wind. 

Lemurs are all perfectly harmless, yet their big eyes, weird 
actions, and often loud and strange cries in the dark woods, 
have led to their being partly reverenced and partly Fear of 
feared by the natives of their countries. The very Lemurs - 
name "lemur," given them by Linnaeus, means "ghost." In 
Madagascar, where they are the most characteristic animals 
of the forest, none is intentionally killed by anybody. Travel- 
ers are told that if a person sleeps in the forest an aye-aye will 
bring him a pillow — if for his head the person will become 
rich; if for his feet he will either die or become bewitched. 
Hence if an aye-aye is accidentally caught in a trap the owner 
will usually set it free, after smearing it with grease to render 
it harmless. Some Malagasies believe that their ancestors were 
changed after death into the great babakoto,. and that the trees 
in which these clamorous lemurs dwell supply infallible reme- 
dies against otherwise incurable diseases. Forbes, 3 after read- 
ing the works of French explorers, writes : — 

"The people say it is very dangerous to kill these lemurs with spears, 
because if a spear is hurled against one of them it seizes the spear in its 
flight without being in itself hurt, and in its turn stabs with certain aim 
those attacking it. They also relate that when the female has borne a 

55 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

young one, she takes the little creature in her arms and tosses it to herniate, 
who is seated on a neighboring tree, and that he throws it back to the female. 
If the little one does not fall to the ground after being subjected to this exer- 
cise for a dozen times, the parents bring it up with the greatest care ; but 
if the contrary event happens, they abandon it, not even troubling to pick 
it up." 



This is an excellent example of the sort of material with 
which the pages of " natural history" books were formerly 

loaded, as serious informa- 
tion, not, as here, as the 
credulous say-so of childish 
savages; and recent develop- 
ments in literature seem to 
show that modern readers 
would accept the same sort 
of wonder-tales as confid- 
ingly as did our grand- 
fathers. 

Similar superstitions at- 
tach to both species of 
Oriental loris. Thus, the 
curious emaciated " slender " 
loris of southern India 
and Ceylon is brought in 
large numbers to the mar- 
kets of Madras, because, as 
Jerdon 44 explains, their big eyes are a favorite remedy among 
Tamil doctors for ophthalmic diseases ; and Tennent 17 reports 
that the Singhalese compose from their eyeballs love potions 
and charms. The Malays of Sumatra told Stanley Flower 45 
that the "slow" loris is always unhappy because it is forever 
seeing ghosts, and that is why it hides its face in its hands — 
an instance of the way in which acute observation of specific 
habits and manners is frequently mingled with gross mistakes 

56 




Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Soc. 

Slow Loris. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



DWARF LEMUR AND MOUSE LEMUR 

and most illogical beliefs and superstitions. Never stopping 
apparently to think of the little animal as he really is, a Malay 
will in good faith account to you for the commission of an 
unpremeditated crime by asserting that some enemy "had 
buried a particular part of a loris under his threshold, which 
had, unknown to him, compelled him to act to his disad- 
vantage." Even the little malmag is feared in Sumatra, where 
the appearance of a pair in a rice field is supposed to presage 
misfortune, or even death, to the farmer. 




A Dwarf Lemur (Microcebus Smithii). 



This represents the most diminutive of the lemurs, the species illustrated being no 
larger than a chipmunk. The mouse-lemurs (Chirogale and Opolemur) look much 
like them, but are more robust, and accumulate a deposit of fat about the basal part 
of the tail, by which they sustain the long fast enforced by their annual dormancy 
These minute lemurs belong to many species, but are few in numbers. 



57 



BATS AND FLYING-FOXES — Otdct, CHIROPTERA 

No animals would seem more dissimilar from monkeys and 
lemurs than the bats, yet there are so many points of resemblance 
in structure that some of the older zoologists classified bats 
among the Primates, and modern ones rank them next to them 
in an order Chiroptera — the . " wing-handed " creatures. No 
fossil remains have been discovered bridging the gap between 
these and the lemurs, on the one hand, or the Insectivora on 
the other ; and no one is yet able to explain the steps in ac- 
quirement of the power of birdlike flight which so sharply dis- 
tinguishes bats from all other mammals. In fact, at first bats 
were classed with birds, regardless of their fur and teeth and 
of the fact that their young were born and suckled like those of 
other mammals ; and this egregious error was not authentically 
corrected until refuted by John Ray, the father of modern 
zoology, who was born in England in 1628 and died in 1705. 

Bats are simply flying mammals, necessarily small, with the 
bones of the fore limbs light, hollow, and greatly elongated, the 
middle finger in some cases exceeding the total length of the 
body. These lengthened digits (1st to 4th, for the thumb is 
short and remains outside) support between themselves and the 
hinder limbs a membrane which opens and closes much like 
an umbrella. Most bats also have a membrane between the 
hind legs and the tail, supported by a bony process from the 
heel, and useful in steering. The expanse of these leathery 
wings is far greater than that of most birds relative to the size 
of the body, but the muscles are weaker; and the exterior 
thumb with its strong claw, and in some cases a sucker, by 

53 



WINGS OF BATS 

which bats scramble about rocks and trees, recalls the similar 
organ in that primitive, lizardlike bird, the archaeopteryx. The 
body is small, with a capacious chest to contain the very large 
lungs and heart, and to support the wing muscles ; and the breast- 
bone is keeled. The skull is almost as large as the chest, with 
wide nostrils and ears but minute eyes (except in the fox bats), 
and the mouth has thirty-eight teeth of the usual four kinds, but 




Little Brown Bat of the Eastern United States. 

all with very sharp cutting edges and the canines frequently 
long and needlelike. The pelvis, on the contrary, is weak, and 
the hind limbs are small, while the knee bends backward because 
of the outward twist of the limb. This makes the foot almost 
useless for walking, but fits it, with its peculiarly strengthened 
ankle, to be extended straight backward, and serve as a means 
of hanging the body, head downwards — the bat's ordinary 
attitude in rest or sleep. 

The wing-membrane is the most striking feature of bats, and their chief 
reliance not only for moving about, but for information, since its surface 
is so exquisitely sensitive that apparently the animal becomes wing 
aware of the nearness of a solid object approached in utter dark- Membrane, 
ness, when the eyes — which at best are minute and buried in fur — could 
not perceive it. Indeed, in the often-quoted experiments by Spallanzani, 47 it 
was shown that blinded bats could fly swiftly about in a room full of dangling 
strings and other obstacles without touching one, alight easily where they 
pleased, and apparently travel without any inconvenience. Schobl and 
others have verified these disclosures, and have explained them by micro- 

59 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

scopic examinations of the wing membrane. Schbbl found that it consisted 
of a double layer of skin, one continuous with the hide of the back, the other 
with that of the abdomen, fused together. Within these fused skins are em- 
bedded two layers of elastic muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, the last in an 
extremely complicated system, with innumerable branching fibrils extending 
nearly to the surface ; also a vast number of bulblike ends, each situated 
at the root of one of the microscopically minute hairs with which the surface 
of the wing is covered. To these hairs and bulbous underlying "end 
organs" are attributed the bat's exalted sense of touch, while another set 
of fibrils seems to report sensations of temperature, pain, etc. 

Many bats are aided, furthermore, by membranous outgrowths about 
the ears and nose, similarly formed and equally or more sensitive. These 
in some families reach an extravagant size, and give the face a most comical 
or perhaps hideous aspect ; and they are larger in males than in females. 





Examples of Membranous Growths on the Faces of Leaf-nosed Bats. 



The bats fall into two divisions, — the small and nocturnal 
Microchiroptera, and the large and diurnal Megachiroptera. 

The former division is the higher in respect to organization, 
and contains the greater number and variety of bats, scattered 
all over the world, even to the Arctic Circle, Cape Horn, and 
remote sea islands. There are five families, — the Phyllosto- 
midae and Emballonuridae of the Tropics generally; the desert 
bats (Nycteridae), the nose-leaf bats (Rhinolophidae) of the 
warmer parts of the Old World; and the Vespertilionidae, 
which have no nose leaf, are represented in all quarters of the 
globe, and are by far the most numerous of all. 

60 



VAMPIRE BATS 

The first-mentioned is an extensive family of rather large 
bats with well- developed eyes, large ears, nose leaves, and three 
phalanges in the middle finger. They are scattered over tropi- 
cal America, and the most of them feed wholly upon insects, 
others on a mixture of insects and fruit, while two species have 
become world-famous as " vampires," — a name recalling the 
superstition rife in Europe in the Middle Ages as to foul, blood- 
exhausting fiends, which were fabled to lull their victims into 
unconsciousness by the slow flapping of their wings, 
and then deprive them of life. The foremost of 
these vampires is a small reddish species (Desmodus rufus), 
whose front teeth are like keen daggers, while the cheek teeth 
have disappeared, having nothing to do, since the animal sub- 
sists wholly on a liquid diet (blood), and the digestive organs 
are extremely modified ; indeed, no other mammal known 
shows so great a departure from the type in its mouth and 
stomach as does this. To quote Professor Flower : 16 — 

"Travelers describe the wounds inflicted by the large, sharp-edged 
incisors as similar to those caused by a razor when shaving: a portion of 
the skin being shaved off and a large number of severed capillary vessels 
thus exposed, from which a constant flow of blood is maintained. From 
this source the blood is drawn through the exceedingly narrow gullet — 
too narrow for anything solid to pass — into the intestinelike stomach, 
where it is probably gradually drawn off during the slow process of diges- 
tion, while the animal, sated with food, is hanging in a state of torpidity 
from the roof of a cave or the inner side of a hollow tree. 

"They appear to be confined to the forest-clad parts, and their attacks 
on men and other warm-blooded animals were noticed by some of the 
earliest writers. Thus Peter Martyr (Anghiera), who wrote soon after 
the conquest of South America, says that in the Isthmus of Darien there 
were bats which sucked the blood of men and cattle when asleep to such 
a degree as to kill them. Condamine, a writer of the eighteenth century, 
remarks that at Borja (Ecuador) and in other places they had entirely de- 
stroyed the cattle introduced by the missionaries." 

Although many of the old stories of harm done to men and 
women were exaggerated, it is true that vampires attack sleep- 

61 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



ing persons, and without awakening them withdraw an annoy- 
ing quantity of blood. 

For the many curious adaptations and habits of the hundreds 
of other kinds of bats, the reader must be sent to the larger 
zoologies, and to the writings of Dobson, 46 the leading authority 
on the group. A capital account of bats and the superstitions 
about them has been written by Dr. Oswald. 120 In general, the 
bats of this division are night flyers, and retire during the day 

to dark places, such as 
hollow trees, caves, and 
the crevices and cham- 
bers of old buildings 
and of ruins. There 
they hang by their heels 
to the rocks and walls, 
sometimes in compact 
masses which burst into 
a cloud of frightened 
creatures when the 
haunt is invaded; and 
the acrid odor of their 
bodies, and of the deposits of their valuable coal-black guano 
(which has become an article of commerce), is almost overpower- 
ing. The rock tombs and temples of India, and the tombs and 
pyramids of Egypt, are thronged with various bats. 55 
Egypt seems peculiarly well suited to bats, by its 
warm climate and clear sky at night, and the bat guano from 
certain caves is valuable in agriculture. In warm countries 
these retreats are occupied the year round ; in colder countries 
some species regularly migrate to the South in winter, as is the 
practice of some bats of the United States, but most sleep away 
the cold months when no insects are flying. 

The food of most bats consists of insects caught on the wing 
at dusk and dawn, and they do us much service by their agile 

62 




Brownell, Phot. 

A Bat in a Sleeping Position. 



Tomb Bats. 




PROTECTIVE COLORS OF BATS 

industry; or tropical species may take a mixed diet, and such 
have peculiar, brush- tipped tongues. The fur is usually some 
hue of brown or gray, but a few Orien- 
tal species are mottled or variegated 
with orange, bright yellow, black, and 
so on, most strikingly displayed in the V^v^S 
painted bat of Ceylon, which is deep 
orange with varicolored wings. It Brush-tongued Bat. 
haunts the forest, says Jerdon, hiding by day in the folded leaf 
of a plantain, and when disturbed in the sunlight looks more 
like a butterfly than a bat. 

One would think such a gaudy dress dangerously conspicuous, but it 
will not do to pronounce upon such a matter until we are thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the wild habits of the wearer. Mr. Swinhoe, a c . 
diligent and sagacious naturalist long resident in China, informs ment by 
us that in fact the colors are highly protective. He describes ° or ' 
one of these brilliant bats, native to Formosa, as resorting almost exclu- 
sively to the longan tree. "Now this tree is an evergreen; and all the year 
through some portion of its foliage is undergoing decay, the particular 
leaves being in such a stage partially orange and black. This bat can 
therefore at all seasons suspend from its branches, and elude its enemies 
by its resemblance to the leaf of the tree. It was in August when this speci- 
men was brought me. It had at that season found the fruit ripe and red- 
dish yellow, and had tried to escape observation in the resemblance of its 
own tints to those of the fruit." Dobson reaches the same conclusion re- 
garding the red hue of the Indian fox bats ; and other instances are quoted 
by Dr. Dallas, who has given an extensive and interesting account of the 
bats of the world in "CasselPs Natural History," Vol. I. 

In the United States we have about eighteen species of bats 
(See Allen's 49 and Miller's 50 monographs), nearly all of the 
family Vespertilionidae, half a dozen of which are familiar in 
the east and several others on the Pacific coast ; and entertain- 
ing accounts of their habits are given by Bachman, 90 Godman, 91 
Merriam, 48 Fisher, 51 and others; while much about those of 
the West Indies will be found in Gosse's 53 book on Jamaica. 

63 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

One extraordinary sub-family contains the large carnivorous 
" false vampires" of India (Megaderma), which kill and feed 
upon small animals, chiefly frogs. In respect to the obscure 
breeding habits of our North American bats, Stone and Cram 52 
offer the following information : — 

"Awake, at the most, some four out of every twenty-four hours of their 
drowsy little lives, they never make any nests or even attempt to fix over 
the crannies where they hide and where the little bats are born. These 
helpless things are not left at home at the mercy of foraging rats and mice. 
When the old bat flits off into the twilight, the youngsters go with her from 
the first, clinging about her neck, swinging away over the tree tops, and 
along the foggy water-side, while she chases the numberless little flying 
things of the dark. When there are twins the he bat takes his share of the 
responsibility, and carries them about with him until they are able to look 
out for themselves. 

"One summer two little bats were discovered hanging close together on 
the branch of a low tree on the lawn; during the day-time the parent re- 
mained with them, folding her wings about them, but at dusk she generally 
left them while she foraged for food. After a couple of days, however, 
they disappeared, doubtless transferred to some other spot safe from pry- 
ing eyes." 

The fruit-eating bats (Megachiroptera) must have a few 

words. Some fifteen genera and seventy species are distributed 

from South Africa to Tapan, Australia, and Polynesia. 

Fruit Bats. 

None has expanded ears, or nose leaves, or membranes 
between the tail and the thighs. The smaller species (one 
weighing only an ounce) are often very peculiar, — as the 
harpies, whose nostrils protrude as tubes; the strange hairless 
bat of Borneo, which, having no hair to which a baby could 
cling, carries its young in an abdominal pouch; or the larger 
West African hammerhead, whose muzzle is swollen into a 
grotesque form. A well-known species is the Egyptian rousette, 
which abounds in the orchards of the Nile delta, and gorges 
itself on the fruit of the doleb palm. The ordinary fruit eaters, 
however, are those forty or more species of Madagascar, India, 

64 



FRUIT BATS OR FLYING-FOXES 

and eastward, suitably named "fox bats," for some of them, as 
the Indian flying-fox or the Malayan kalong, are almost as big 
as foxes, the latter species reaching a length of eighteen inches 
and measuring five feet across the outstretched wings. They 
are clothed in fox-red fur, have long, pointed muzzles, sharp, 
upright ears, and big eyes, giving them a terrierlike look. 




East Indian Flying- fox. 



These bats feed on all sorts of soft fruits except acid ones, 
such as oranges; are especially fond of figs and guavas; and 
are a destructive pest to orchards and gardens. In some parts 
of Java, for example, no delicate fruit can be raised except by 
protecting the trees with nets and fighting off the nightly forays 
They live and travel in vast companies, 
f 65 



of bands of kalongs. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

roosting by day on chosen trees, where they hang by one hind 
leg, each protected from the sun's glare, and from rain, in the 
closely wrapped mantle of its wings, and large branches fre- 
quently break under the weight. At sunset they fly away to 
their feeding grounds, scattering over a wide area. Where a 
Riotous fig tree attracts a crowd, the roughest fighting begins 
Living. over p 0Ve ted plunder, each one screaming, clawing, 

biting, and struggling to seize something and get away to a 
secure retreat to enjoy it. " There he hangs by one foot, and, 
grasping the fruit he has secured in the claws and opposable 
thumb of the other, he hastily reduces it to lumps, with which 
he stuffs his cheek pouches until they become distended like 
those of a monkey." Later he chews and swallows this food 
at leisure. At dawn all return to their roosts, and, says Tickell, 
"hook themselves along the branches, scrambling about hand 
over hand with some speed, biting each other severely, striking 
out with the long claw of the thumb, shrieking and cackling 
without intermission." No doubt these squabbles are rendered 
more violent by the disgracefully dissipated habits in which the 
bats indulge during their nocturnal expeditions, for, according 
to Dr. Francis Day and other observers, "they often pass the 
night drinking the toddy from the chatties in the cocoanut 
trees, which results either in their returning home in the early 
morning in a state of extreme and riotous intoxication, or in 
being found the next day at the foot of the trees, sleeping off 
the effects of their midnight debauch." 

The larger fruit bats are eaten by the natives of their countries, 
and liked by white men when carefully skinned and cooked; 
nevertheless the bat pronounced unclean food by Mosaic law 
(Deut. xiv. 18; Lev. xi. 19) was of this kind. They are some- 
times tamed as affectionate pets. 

Few animals have acquired a worse reputation among the 
ignorant and superstitious than bats, — and less deserve it ; 
nor is it likely that those of America or Europe would have 

66 



FABLES AND SUPERSTITIONS 

produced such an impression of gloom and terror as the 
Oriental bats seem long ago to have done. 

"That the ancient Greek and Roman poets, furnished with exaggerated 
accounts of the animals infesting the remote regions with which their com- 
merce or their conquests had made them acquainted," remarks Bell, in his 
classic '"History of British Quadrupeds," 93 "should have caught eagerly at 
those marvelous stories and descriptions, and rendered them subservient 
to their fabulous but highly imaginative mythology, is not wonderful ; and 
it is more than probable that some of the Indian species of bats, with their 
predatory habits, their multitudinous numbers, their obscure and myste- 
rious retreats, and the strange combination of the character of beast and 
bird which they were believed to' possess, gave to Virgil the idea, which he 
has so poetically worked out, of the Harpies which fell upon the hastily 
spread tables of the hero and his companions, and polluted, whilst they 
devoured, the feast from which they had driven the affrighted guests. But 
that the little harmless bats of our own climate, whose habits are at once so 
innocent and so amusing, and whose time of appearance and activity is 
that when everything around would lead the mind to tranquillity and peace, 
should be forced into mystery and horror, as an almost essential feature 
in the picture, is an anomaly which cannot be easily explained." 

At any rate, while the graceful pinions of a bird have been 
given to their angels of light, the leathery and angular wings 
of the bat have always been used by painters and sculptors to 
signalize the forms of fiends from pits of darkness. This is 
simply the old primal contrast of light and darkness, day and 
night, for which the nocturnal and elusive bat has furnished a 
ready symbol. 




Lyre Bat (Megaderma). 
67 



SHREWS, MOLES, etc., — Order, INSECTIVORA 

The next order of mammals to be considered is that of the 
Insectivora, — a collection difficult to define, of small- sized 
and plantigrade, but otherwise very unlike animals, which feed 
almost wholly on insects or worms. They are found in all 
parts of the world except Australia and South America, but near 
relatives are sometimes widely separated, the insectivores of 
the West Indies, for example, being closely allied to those of 
Madagascar. Some are subterranean, others aquatic or ar- 
boreal. Deep-seated distinctions in structure correspond to 
these variations in mode of living, and strengthen the evidence 
from fossils that this group represents "little altered survivors 
of some of the most primitive placental mammals." 

There is a good deal of evidence, direct and indirect, that the insecti- 
vores were once a far more abundant and important group. So far as we 
can tell from the rare and fragmentary jaws and tiny teeth, the order is of 
immense antiquity, being traceable far back into the Age of Reptiles, during 
the Jurassic period. At all events, they were a numerous and varied group 
in the Eocene, including arboreal, terrestrial, and aquatic types, some of 
considerable size, and several species very abundant, besides many minute 
forms comparable to the moles and shrews of the present day, and very 
likely ancestral to them. At the beginning of the Tertiary, they are indis- 
tinguishable from the earlier of the creodonts, but the latter soon branched 
off, becoming adapted to a predaceous life, while the insectivores retained 
more nearly their ancient mode of living and failed to keep progress with 
the higher groups, so that in the later Tertiary epochs they diminished rapidly 
in numbers and variety. To-day only a few survivors are left, protected 
from their enemies by some unusual defense, as in the case of the hedge- 
hogs ; by a subterranean mode of life, as the moles ; by their agility, minute 
size, and unpleasant odor and taste, as are the shrews ; or, finally, by their 

68 



ANCESTRY OF SHREWS AND MOLES 



living in some remote corner of the world, as Madagascar, Cuba, or South 
Africa, where their more highly organized and intelligent enemies and rivals 
have not yet searched them out and hunted them into oblivion. 

This antiquity, and their . pretension of primitive generalized 
characteristics, account for the otherwise puzzling resemblances 
shown by some of them to bats and lemurs (especially the 
aye-aye), and make it very difficult to place the order in a true 
relation to the other 
orders. Whether, in- 
deed, the insectivores 
have not descended 
from several primitive 
stocks, instead of only 
one, is still undecided. 
One of the most out- 
of-the-way forms is the 

colugo, or 

kaguan, an 
animal of the Oriental 
forests, which is about 
the size of a cat and 
has a very voluminous 
"patagium," or exten- 
sion of furry skin, so 
that it looks and sails 
through the air like 
a flying-squirrel; but the patagium more resembles that of 
a bat, while otherwise the creature is so lemurlike that it is 
often called in books the " flying-lemur." It feeds on leaves, 
is nocturnal, rests during the day by clinging, head downward, 
to a shady trunk, sails from tree to tree by long leaps, and is 
familiar from Siam to Java, while a smaller species lives in the 
Philippines. Wallace 31 and Horsfield 57 have written most about 
it; and its genus represents a suborder Dermoptera, while all 

69 



Colugo. 




The Short-tailed Shrew. 



THE LiEE Od? MAMMALS 

the remainder of the order are called Insectivora, or true 
insectivores. 

Of these latter the highest are the shrews, — small, mouselike 
animals, with long, pointed heads, slender jaws filled with sharp, 
red-tipped teeth, the incisors long, forward-pointing, 
and curved, a flexible, bewhiskered nose sometimes 
much prolonged, close, rounded ears, and a musky smell. The 
fur is soft and the tail scantily haired. Shrews are found in 
most parts of the world, and in spite of their littleness are 




>&v-," . 



Common Eastern Long-tailed Shrew. 

wonderfully hardy, existing in far northern regions and on high 
mountains. Even our eastern long-tailed shrew, the smallest 
mammal known in the world, since it is not bigger than the end 
of one's little finger and weighs but a fraction of an ounce, is 
able to run about in the snow, or to burrow through it, even 
when the mercury stands twenty degrees or more below zero. 
All the shrews are ceaselessly active, wandering about 
underneath leaves, old grass, and logs, and boring their way 
into loose loam or the punky wood of decayed stumps, in search 
of earthworms, grubs, beetles, slugs, and similar prey, including 
young mice and the fledglings of ground-nesting birds, and 
varying this fare by bites from soft-shelled beechnuts, tuberous 
roots, etc. They are astonishingly quick of hearing; are bold, 
pugnacious, and fierce, often killing and eating other shrews; 
difficult to keep alive in captivity, utterly untamable, and 
easily frightened to death. 87 All kinds exhale from glands near 

70 



SURE WISH CHAR A C TERIS TICS 

their armpits a musky odor which no doubt is protective, since 
most hawks, cats, foxes, etc., do not eat them unless excessively 
hungry; but owls and weasels "appear to be well pleased with 
such flavors, and catch and devour them in large numbers." 
This odor reaches its maximum in the great musk shrews of 
the warmer parts of the Old World, one of which is the mis- 
named "musk rat" of India, familiar to every villager, for it 
enters houses at night and ransacks them for insect vermin. 
Many long-nosed shrews are aquatic in their habits, dwelling 
in bank burrows and swimming, diving, and even walking with 
ease on the bottom of streams where they find their food. All 
have some modification or other of feet and tail to adapt them 
to these methods of work. 

One of the most extraordinary things in natural history is 
the fact that ancient superstitions cling to these little creatures 
in Europe, and are now and then heard of even in America. 87 
Gilbert White 62 gives us a hint of them in his well-known 
account of the shrew ash at Selborne. Another old writer, 




Western Shrewmole. 

the Reverend Edward Topsell, "clearke of the king his most 
excellent maiesties closet," at the opening of the seventeenth 
century, in his rare "Historie of Four-footed Beastes," printed 
in London in 1607, says of the shrew that "it is a ravening 
beaste, feigning itself gentle and tame, but, being touched, it 
biteth deeply and poysoneth deadly. It beareth a cruel minde, 
desiring to hurt anything, neither is there any creature that it 
loveth, or it loveth him, because it is feared of all." 

71 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



The shrews are connected with their relatives, the moles, by 
various mole shrews, and by the large, web-footed, long-snouted 
aquatic " desmans" of the Pyrenees and of Russia, whose silky 
coat is so much valued by the peasants of the Volga Valley. 
The moles belong to the northern hemi- 
sphere alone, and differ from shrews in 
their greater size and wholly subter- 
ranean habits. The head is small, 
pointed, and almost continuous with the 
thick, tailless body, from which the 
limbs project very little, so that the 
animal has the shape of a round , pointed 
wedge; ears and eyes have almost 
disappeared and the sense of smell 
is mainly depended upon for such in- 
formation as the creature requires. 
The fur is soft, short, and lies equally 
well either backward or forward ; 
and the mouth has forty small, sharp 
teeth. The most striking adaptive 
change, however, has occurred in the 
fore limbs, to fit them to the work of 
digging. The breastbone, collar bones, 
and arm bones are all shortened, set for- 
ward (giving a great leverage), twisted 
outward and enormously strengthened, 
and terminate in a massive "hand," 
whose fingers bear spadelike claws, 
supplemented by a special "sesamoid" bone, outside of the 
thumb, which really forms a sixth finger. The hind limbs are 
little changed. 

The mole passes its whole life underground, only occasionally 
coming out upon the surface at night. Its enormous strength 
enables it to force its way through compact soil, though it 

72 




Bones of Forearm and 
Manus of Mole. 

7, cuneiform ; ce, centrale; 
/, lunar ; m, magnum ; p, 
pisiform ; R, radius ; rs, 
radial sesamoid (falci- 
form) ; s, scaphoid ; td, 
trapezoid ; tm, trapezium ; 
U, ulna ; u, unciform ; 
/- V, the digits. 



HABITS OF MOLES 

naturally prefers the looser sort near the surface, and on this 
account, as well as because such places are richer in worms, 
it infests gardens and lawns, where its course is marked by the 
heaved-up soil beneath which it has passed, and by the hillocks 
of earth which it now and then comes to the surface to throw 
out. For the most part, however, it simply loosens the soil 
with its powerful diggers, crowds it beneath and behind it, 
and glides on, leav- 
ing no proper tunnel, 
since it does not mean 
to go back that way, 
but is merely wan- 
dering about in 
search of the earth- 
worms, grubs, and 
other flesh to which 
it is guided by its 

delicate scent. In uiwneii, phot. 

A Garden Mole. 
winter the moles dig 

below the frost line and do not hibernate. Each family has, how- 
ever, a central home, or burrow, which is the true " mole hill," and 
here are a series of connecting galleries, a living chamber with an 
opening to the surface, and regular tunnels leading off toward 
the customary hunting grounds. Wood 63 and Bell 93 have 
pictured this as a complicated "fortress," said to show very 
high engineering intelligence; but this seems exaggerated, and 
certainly is not true of the American mole, which, also, does not 
gather in colonies as do those of Europe. An interesting fact 
is mentioned of the latter by Beddard, namely, that a German 
naturalist believes he has evidence that it stores up worms for 
consumption during the winter, biting off their heads to prevent 
their crawling away. 

Our common mole has webbed hind feet as if aquatic, as also 
have the eastern hairy-tailed mole and Townsend's mole of the 

73 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Pacific coast ; but none of these is so likely to be found in marshy 
ground as is our quaint star-nosed mole, which, as Stone and 
Cram say, is a creature almost as well fitted for a partially 
aquatic life as the otter and mink, and, as a matter of fact, does 
star-nosed P ass most °f ^ ts ^ me a bout the water, pushing exten- 
Moie. s j ve tunnels through the black peaty soil of swamps 

and along the borders of little brooks and ponds. "The soft, 
black loam is thrown up in frequent heaps, a foot more or less 




Star-nosed Mole. 

in diameter, the opening of the burrow being under the bank, 
and as often beneath the water as above." This mole is easily 
recognized by the fact that its piglike snout ends in a circlet of 
fleshy pink tentacles. . It feeds on worms and insects, but like 
its relatives varies this with such fish, fish eggs, reptiles, and 
other flesh as it can get. A learned treatise on American moles 
has been written by Dr. Frederick W. True. 7 

In South Africa dwells a group (Chrysochloris) of moles called "golden," 
because of the unique and lovely iridescence of their fur; but they inter- 
est us chiefly because the bones of the fore limb are modified in a totally 
different way from the typical, and by their likeness to the Australian mar- 
supial mole. Africa also contains the elephant or jumping shrews, which 
take their first name from the proboscislike extension of the snout, espe- 
cially marked in the Algerian species, or "rat a trompeY' which is tamed 
as a funny pet; and take the second name from the elongated and half- 

74 



TREE-SHREWS AND TENRECS 

naked hind legs, which give them much the look and the leaping gait of 

jerboas. Many kinds are known, all as big as rats, or larger, and dwelling 

in crevices of rocks and like places, whence they go abroad at 

Tropical 
nightfall in search of insects. Shrews. 

Much like them in structure and in the flexible trunk are 
the pretty tupaias or tree-shrews of India and eastward to the Philippines; 
otherwise they so closely resemble squirrels in appearance, food, and but 
manners that in the case of one species at least "one has to look at 
the teeth" to distinguish them. This has often been adduced as a case 
of "mimicry," which is very rare among mammals; but it seems to me 
rather an instance of "convergence," that is, the result of two animals 
coming to be like one another because they have followed the same manner 
of life under identical circum- 
stances. The likeness of the 
jumping shrews to jerboas is an- 
other instance. Some of these 
tupaias are very numerous and 
familiar in India and Sumatra, 
running freely about houses when 
allowed, and even scampering 
over the table to pick morsels of 

food from the plates. 

. . Elephant Shrew. 

A rarer oddity is the river 

shrew of West Africa, which looks and behaves like a small otter, though 

its tail is compressed like a muskrat's. Then there are the almiquis of 

Cuba and Haiti, which suggest ground- traveling opossums, and their 

cousins, the ancient race of tenrecs of Madagascar. Among many curious 

peculiarities, the tenrecs have that of spines along the back or mixed with 

the hairs, and an ability to partly roll themselves up. 43 These qualities 

show a likeness to the hedgehogs, which are widely distributed in the Old 

World but unknown in the New, for our "hedgehog" is a porcupine. 

The common European hedgehog is a queer little animal, 
about ten inches long, covered with an armor of short, stiff, 
and sharp gray spines, and trotting on small legs 
and feet which scarcely lift it off the ground. It 
pokes its piglike snout into all sorts of places likely to harbor 
prey, and is careless of enemies, since it is guarded as well as 
is an armadillo or tortoise in its shell. Thus protected and 

75 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




European Hedgehog. 



doing good rather than harm to garden or orchard by its visits, 
it survives numerously in the midst of civilization, and few 
animals have been so closely watched or so well "written up." 
The following is from Maunder' s "Treasury" : — 

"When molested, it instantly rolls itself into a sort of ball and presents 
but its prickles to the foe ; and the more the animal is irritated and alarmed, 

the more firmly 
does it contract 
itself, and the 
more stiff and 
strong does its 
bristly panoply be- 
come. Thus rolled 
up it patiently 
awaits till the 
danger is passed: 
the cat, the weasel, 
the ferret, and the 
marten soon de- 
cline the combat; 

and though a well-trained, wire-haired terrier or a fox may now and then be 
found to open a hedgehog, it generally remains impenetrable. 

"The hedgehog is strictly nocturnal, remaining coiled up in its retreat 
during the day, and wandering about nearly all the night in search of food. 
It generally resides in small thickets, in hedges, or in ditches covered with 
bushes, making a hole about six inches deep, which it lines with moss, 
grass, or leaves. The hibernation of the hedgehog is undoubted ; although 
it lays up no store for the winter, it retires to its hole, and m its warm, soft 
nest of moss and leaves it lies secure from the rigors of the frost and the 
violence of the tempest, passing the dreary season in a profoundly torpid 
state. The female produces from two to four young ones early in the sum- 
mer, which at their birth are blind and covered with soft white spines which 
in two or three days become hard and elastic. The flesh of these animals, 
though generally rejected as human food, is said to be very delicate." 

Although the little animal feeds mainly on slugs, snails, insects, 
etc., and its services are constantly requested in country kitchens 
infested with cockroaches, it also eats birds' eggs, mice, frogs, 
toads, and even snakes, and its eagerness to attack and devour 

76 



ANTIQUITY OF HEDGEHOGS 

vipers compensates for occasional depredations upon outlying 
nests of game birds and poultry. When it discovers a viper 
it will pursue it, smell at and lick it, not minding the "striking" 
of this poisonous serpent, and at last will seize and bite it all 
along the back, breaking the bones in many places, and then 
proceed to devour it. Almost as many fables and errors are 
current among the peasantry in regard to the hedgehog as to the 
shrew. 

In the Malayan region is found a related genus (Gymnura) ; 
and fossils show that the hedgehog family (Erinaceidae) is one 
of the oldest known among mammals, and has undergone 
very little change since the Miocene era, which illustrates 
how when nature hits upon a good thing it preserves it ! 




Head and Palm of Fore Foot of American Garden Mole. 



77 





Bf^HHBl?* f t\ m 


','ifl 


.Sh 


HEl V "^ ^^"1^.1 ; T* 


jHRW 






rk" : **' 




Fi-Alr 


uk 


k^ an^^n 


wKB|.- 


r ajV ft: 


yfev 


apkw- jH "JWB. -fi^H Ba 


W ^w 


F * 




k[m -^\^ 


L 




' .A ** fit 


■ 


w s w i 


- . «' 


H^ 


■HPL * M MHii *ys ,i% 


^Hte» 


■*: ■ n k •* & ^Ji 




H i*^ 


^H 


■■iMi 


, <m 


».<♦ -^sSaf 


fc/ 








HSa?^'- **5^&E ^» ''--''^BhBW 1 " 


• <£• _. 


'PHI Jf 'IK 




' iIIPkJ U **--V» ;# 










mBk^tjf v W, H^Sei^y^ 






!#> 


* : ^^a^ii^Ki 


: Mm 




*^fei-^^M 






P ' W 


"' : ' : BF^Fm!i** ; - ^%^f^ 


S^ '' 


p/«^y^iS^ $ ; '^% : -v 


»"*■ ' 


^^^^^■■BPn^ - % 


,- 


Ww^B^^m\ * 




mr x& W$¥j/ ' ^ 




m '*WFk*&MBp*m : 



78 



PRIMITIVE FLESH EATERS — Order, CREODONTA 

Some of my younger readers may have asked themselves by 
this time how the order of the larger groups of our subject is 
determined, — why the Insectivora followed the Primates, 
the Carnivora are to come next, then the Ungulata, and so on. 
The reason is, partly, that their ancestors, so far as we know 
them as fossils, seem to have been related in a way which in- 
dicates such a succession. It is scarcely more than an indica- 
tion, however, for although in describing them, or making a list, 
we must set the animals in a row, naturalists long ago ceased 
attempting to show that any linear arrangement 
of that kind represented the reality. The present ciassifica- 
variety among mammals (as in other classes) is the 
result of development along different lines from one or more 
points of beginning, so that any proper picture of the growth 
and arrangement of any class would be that of a spreading fan, 
with sticks of unequal length ; or that of the branches of a tree 
— some reaching farther than others and themselves dividing 
again and again into twigs. 

"One of the most striking and significant results of the study of the later 
Mesozoic and earliest Tertiary mammalian faunas," says Professor Scott, 
"is that the higher or placental mammals are seen to be converging back 
to a common ancestral group of clawed and carnivorous or omnivorous 
animals, now entirely extinct, to which the name of Creodonta was given by 
Cope. The creodonts are assuredly the ancestors of the modern flesh 
eaters, and, very probably, of the great series of hoofed animals also, as 
well as of other orders. From this central, ancestral group the other orders 
proceed, diverging more and more with the progress of time, each larger 

79 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

branch dividing and subdividing into smaller and smaller branches, until 
the modern condition is attained." 

It is plain, then, that to understand the history of the modern 

mammals we must learn something of the Creodonta. Professor 

E. D. Cope tells us that in the overflowing mam- 

Creodonts. r & 

malian fauna of the early Tertiary there was nothing 
which could be classed with the Carnivora of the present, which 
order did not appear before the Oligocene period. All the 
predatory beasts of that time differed from the Carnivora in 
various points of structure. Their brains were dispropor- 
tionately small and but little convoluted, indicating low intelli- 
gence. Their limbs were shorter, and the wrist and ankle 
joints less compact and strong; the feet less perfectly adapted 
to chasing and seizing ; five-toed as a rule, and resting the heel 
upon the ground; and the tail was long and muscular. The 
teeth in most cases were of that small and primitive type still 
seen in the mouths of the Insectivora, adapted to feeding on 
insects and miscellaneous small things, both animal and vege- 
table. The smaller and more primitive creodonts, indeed, 
are almost indistinguishable from the contemporary insectivores. 
In their later and more advanced races we find certain teeth 
becoming more and more specialized for a flesh diet, but in 
only one family, the Miacidae, are these specialized teeth (car- 
nassials) the same ones as in the modern Carnivora. This 
likeness, with others, shows that our Carnivora are descended 
from the Miacidae. The remaining families of creodonts could 
not compete with the miacids, because of their inferior equip- 
ment, and have left no descendants. 

The creodonts must have been big-headed, savage-looking 
animals, with jaws and teeth disproportionately large and long : 
short-legged, and long-tailed, resembling nothing in our world 
so much as the Tasmanian wolf and Tasmanian devil of Aus- 
tralia, to which, however, they were only remotely akin. Some 
were terrestrial, others dwelt and hunted on trees or in the 

80 



PRIMITIVE FLESH EATERS 

water; and they equaled in size and doubtless in ferocity the 
biggest modern cats and wolves. Along with these strictly 
predacious creodonts were some that mimicked the bears, and 
others (Mesonychidae) whose massive teeth were adapted to 
bone crushing and carrion chewing, so that their habits were 
probably those of hyenas. Some of these last equaled, or 
exceeded in size, the largest modern beasts of prey, and one of 
them is represented in the accompanying illustration. 

Contemporary with the Mesonyx was a more strictly live- 
flesh-eating creodont named Patriofelis, which was nearly as 
big as a lion, and remarkable for its extremely massive pro- 
portions and broad splay feet. The short jaw and catlike teeth 
of this animal — and of its smaller predecessor, Oxyaena, of 
the Lower Eocene — caused the fragmentary fossil remains 
first examined to be mistaken for the bones of ancestors of the 
cats; but fuller knowledge has shown that this was an error. 

The hyaenodons, whose skeletons are obtained from the 
Oligocene formations of Europe and America, represent the 
last surviving branch of the Creodonta, and they presently 
gave place to the more intelligent and better adapted true 
Carnivora (descended from the Miacidae), which arose side by 
side with them and won in the competition for food and success. 




Upper and Lower Teeth of a Creodont (Hy^enodon). 
Shows the carnassial teeth (second upper and third lower molar). 



BEASTS OF PREY -Order, CARNIVORA 

The story of the creodorits tells of the rise of the powerful 
modern order, Carnivora, — the beasts of prey, whose food is 
flesh of other animals which must be killed day by day. Hence 
they are equipped as hunters and fighters, and their armament 
is carried to a very high degree of perfection, so that almost 
every kind of living thing may be preyed upon by one or more 
sorts of carnivores, and each may defend his quarry and himself 
against rapacious rivals. All (except the bears) walk upon the 
under surface of the toes — are "phalangigrade." 

There always has been and always will be in every department and rank 
of animal life a class which thus lives by preying upon its neighbors. From 
the beginning, certain kinds of animals have discovered, by accident or 
example, that some, at least, of their associates were eatable and within their 
power; and have thereafter depended upon them for food. Hence men 
long ago divided the animal kingdom into those living wholly on a vegeta- 
ble diet (herbivorous — herbivores), or wholly on flesh (carnivorous — 
carnivores). 

Now this is an economical arrangement by nature in two ways. In the 
first place, it permits a double use of a larger part of the available and always 
Economiz- nm ^ te( l f° 0( l supply. The vegetable eaters gather and digest 
ing Food the raw materials, so to speak, which are so abundant and 
upp y ' persistent that they afford subsistence for a very great number 

of animals in most parts of the globe; and every sort of growing thing, 
from microscopic diatoms in the water and the scanty lichens on arctic 
rocks to luscious fruits or solid timber, is utilized by some creature. In 
short, the vegetable world could support, generally speaking, no more ani- 
mals than are now feeding upon it, and there the population of the world 
would come to its limit but for a second circumstance : the eating of a 
meal of grass or the like does not put an end to its usefulness as food. This 
raw material, as I have termed it, is simply changed by the processes of 
digestion and assimilation into the substance of the eater's flesh, which 

82 



PLACE IN NATURE 

contains all the nutriment of the original, but is freed from its large pro- 
portion of useless, innutritious matter, discarded as waste. It is therefore 
in condition to be eaten again and support another animal; and so two 
may exist where one lived before. Moreover, the second consumer will 
have the advantage of using the material in a far more compact and refined 
condition. A lion can swallow in five minutes the elaborated equivalent 
in nourishment of what it had taken the antelope all day to gather. The 
better the food, the better the animal ; and this is one good reason why the 
carnivores as a class are superior to the herbivores. 

The other way in which the arrangement serves the economy of nature 
is that the beasts of prey, in catering to their appetites, really serve also the 
interests of the other half of the animal world by keeping the ever growing 
population of vegetable eaters within proper bounds, so that the ratio of 
numbers to food supply is maintained. Without some such check all the 
small rodents, not to speak of the antelopes, deer, etc., would so swarm in 
a few seasons as speedily to destroy the herbage and foliage of the world, 
and bring poverty to all and starvation to many. An idea of what would 
happen may be gained by recalling the way the rabbits have overrun 
Australia, where they had little to fear from "nature's police." 

It is evident that the practice of gaining a living by preying 
upon live creatures, perhaps protected by an armor, or secretly 
hidden, or able to escape swiftly, or to defend themselves vigor- 
ously, calls for an organization very different from that of 
animals with nothing to do but to crop herbage peacefully, 
gather leaves and fruit, or dig for unresisting roots. This 
difference is most strikingly shown in the teeth, which here 
are adapted to seizing, holding, biting, and cutting, in contrast 
to the nibbling and grinding requirements of herbivorous 
animals. The characteristic features of the dentition in the 
Carnivora are the length and strength of the canines, and the 
angular, knife-edged form of the cheek teeth ; while the incisors 
are small and feeble, useful for little more than to scrape a 
bone. On the other hand the canine, of little importance in 
other groups, here becomes of prime importance, — 

jiii- • i i_. i Dentition. 

a dagger and hook in one, — an instrument by which 
both to disable and to hold the prey. Naturally it is most fully 

83 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

developed among dogs and bears, which have little other means 
of seizing an animal, whereas the cat has the efficient aid of its 
claws. But after a predatory animal has killed its victim the 
tough flesh must be cut into pieces small enough to be swallowed, 
and an instrument well suited to this has been gained in the 
alteration of the elsewhere blunt fourth premolar in the upper 

jaw, and the first 

r^i— ^ £ U molar in the lower 

,,/ ^ \y \ /(X \ v/' I jaw, into thin, sharp, 

\ \1 G x ^|" three-pointed fangs, 

\ a '\ \ \J "2^' shutting down past 

^i'-' ~~" x ~^ '--^--^-^-^ -^— - one another like a 

pair of scissor blades. 

DENTITION OF A CARNIVORE (FOX). hit 

Inese are called the 

c, canine teeth; s, sectorial teeth, or carnassials. . . . . ,, .. 

sectorial or car- 
nassial" teeth, and they are often larger and more prominent 
than either the knifelike or conical ones in front of them, or 
the robust molars behind them, whose crowns are studded with 
tubercles, definite in number and arrangement. 

The classification of the Carnivora has been a puzzling task, 

on account of the "generalized" character of many of the 

fossil species, and the constant disclosure of facts 

Families. L . . . 

disconcerting to previous conclusions; but the pre- 
vailing view now is that the order should be divided into 
families arranged as follows : — 

I. Land Carnivora — Fissipedia 

Cats (Felidae) Cosmopolitan. 

Saber-Tooths (Nimravidae) Extinct. 

Civets (Viverridae) Old World. 

Hyenas, etc. (Hyaenidae) Old World. 

Weasels, Badgers, etc. (Mustelidae) Cosmopolitan. 

Dogs (Canidae) Cosmopolitan. 

Bears (Ursidae) Cosmopolitan. 

Raccoons (Procyonidae) America. 

84 



EVOLUTION OF CARNIVORA 



II. Sea Carnivora — Pinnipedia 



Sea Bears or Fur Seals (Otariidae) Eastern Pacific. 

Walruses (Trichechidae) Subarctic Oceans. 

Hair Seals (Phocidae) Cosmopolitan. 

All of these families were well separated long before the 
present geological era, and some of them go back to the dawn 
of the Tertiary, when the Carnivora were beginning to take 
definite characteristics as a great branch of animal development. 
In speaking of the Creodonta it was said that that order had 
disappeared at the close of the Mesozoic, but that there were 
indications that in one direction — that led by the family 
Miacidae — descendants might be traced in the next 
succeeding era, the Eocene. The remains of Eocene 
carnivorous mammals, however, are very few, and often of 
doubtful identity; and at best there exists a long gap in 
structure as well as in time between them and their supposed 
ancestors among the creodonts. Their fossil skeletons combine 
in a puzzling manner features that afterward become distinctive 
of separate families, i.e. they are synthetic, or generalized, types. 



More material has been obtained from the Miocene formations, but the 
specimens still show a generalized condition, in which doglike and civet- 
like features seem most prominent, leading to the conclusion that the canine 
type is the oldest and most central stock, whence the modern diversity has 
gradually branched off. Thus one of the oldest-known fossil carnivores 
is the European Cynodictis (in several varieties), which has been called a 
"viverrine dog" because it is such a combination of civet and fox. This 
shades off into the many species of Galecynus, and of Amphicyon, planti- 
grade animals existing in all parts of the Miocene world, and varying in 
size from that of a small fox to that of a long-bodied bear, — a huge com- 
bination of wolf, mungoos, and bear ! Others of the same or a later time 
are more nearly typical civets, or stand between such and the linsangs, or 
connect civets and weasels; while at the beginning of the next, or Pliocene, 
period, there appears a curious animal, the ictithere, which completely 
unites the civets with the hyenas. 

Amphicyon was plantigrade and had other bearlike characteristics. 
Beside it, as we know from Miocene fossils, lived another animal (Hemi- 

85 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

cyon), which was more dog than civet, plus bearlike features; and later 
we find Hyaenarctos still more ursine, so that these represent a line of change 
from bearlike dogs into doglike bears, and connect the Amphicyon stock 
with the true bears and raccoons. In a similar way fossil forms of the Upper 
Eocene and Lower Miocene connect the civet stock with the apparent 
ancestors of the fur-bearers (weasels, badgers, otters, etc.). It is not, 
indeed, until the late Miocene, near the end of the Tertiary period, that the 
groups of Carnivora as we now see them became distinctly set apart from 
one another by the dying out of the old intermediate stock forms. 

Saber-Tooths and Other Ancient Cats 

The cats, although not the oldest, stand as the most per- 
fected or specialized of all the kinds of carnivores, and probably 
of all kinds of animals, not excepting man. This splendid and 
very compact series first definitely appears in the Oligocene 
era, from an unknown ancestor among the creodonts. Some- 
where in its early history arose a divergent branch, starting in 
the Oligocene with such forms as Pseudoaelurus and Archaelurus, 
which developed amazingly throughout most of the Tertiary 
period, and to which Cuvier gave the name of "saber-tooth 
cats." They were especially numerous and powerful in the 
Americas, yet abounded throughout the Old World. From 
the first these beasts showed a tendency toward enlarging the 
upper canines, until finally in such genera as Smilodon, as re- 
stored by Wolf, they became huge tusks. Dr. W. D. Matthew, 
who has made a particular study of these creatures, has given 
me the benefit of his conclusions in the ensuing account: — 
"Our prehistoric ancestors could have told us of an animal 
much larger and more powerful than any lions or tigers known 
to us, — the great saber-toothed tiger Smilodon, — 
which seems to have realized very completely the 
idea of the King of Beasts as portrayed in mediaeval tradition. 
This great carnivore equaled the largest polar or Kadiak bear 
in size. It was related to the large cats, but distinguished by 
its enormous upper canine teeth, enlarged into curving, sharp- 

86 



SABER-TOOTHED TIGERS 



edged, flattened fangs, projecting seven inches below the jaw. 
No record or tradition of it has survived, but its petrified bones 
have been found in caves and river gravels of the Quaternary 
period, with those of the mammoth, megatherium, and other 
extinct giants, and associated with the relics of the primitive 
men. In the pampas of the Argentine Republic, a rich store- 




By permission of the American Museum of Natural History. 

The Great Saber-toothed Tiger Smilodon. 
Restoration drawn by Wolf, under direction of Dr. Daniel G. Elliot. 

house of fossils, two entire skeletons have been recovered, one 
of which is mounted in the American Museum of Natural 
History in New York. 

" The restoration of an extinct animal might be supposed to be largely 
a matter of conjecture ; but in fact, when a perfect skeleton is at hand, 
and the artist has a knowledge of anatomy and of the form and habitual 
attitudes of its relatives, great certainty is possible. The general propor- 
tions can, of course, be accurately followed in the outline; the form of the 
head, position and size of the eyes and ears, the shape of the muzzle and 
width of the mouth, may be closely inferred from the characters of the 

87 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

skull ; while the size and shape of the muscular attachments on the bones 
enable the artist to reconstruct the muscles of the body with a fair degree 
of exactness. Even the coloring is not wholly guesswork, for it is governed 
very largely by the habits and mode of life of the animal, judged by its 
living kindred. 




"The smilodon had short, muscular limbs and broad, padded 
feet, with retractile, catlike claws; but its general appearance 
/p could not have been 

L very catlike, for the 

shape of the head, the 
\ N-^ high shoulders, short, 
\V deep trunk, and small 
hindquarters were 
much more like a 
hyena. The tail was 
short and stumpy. 
The most noticeable 
peculiarity is the huge, 
saberlike, upper ca- 
(B y nine teeth. 

"The modern great 
cats kill their prey 
usually by biting it in the neck so as to break the spinal column. 
They pursue as a rule the long-necked, thin-skinned ruminants, 
which are the most abundant herbivores of to-day, 
seldom molesting the short-necked, thick-skinned 
pachyderms such as the rhinoceros and the elephant. 
The saber-tooth appears to have used his great canine fangs in a 
quite different method of attack; the whole structure of the 
animal indicates that he struck them forcibly into the side of 
his prey, the mouth gaping wide meanwhile, and then pre- 
sumably withdrew them with a ripping, tearing stroke, leaving 
a great gash whereby a large animal would soon bleed to death. 
The whole head is adapted to such a method of killing. The 

88 



Head of Smilodon. 

Outline restoration drawn by Charles R. Knight 

permission of the American Museum of Natural 
History.) 



Methods 
of Killing 
Prey. 



HABITS OF SABER-TOOTH 

mastoid neck muscles, serving to draw the head down, are so 
excessive in size as to make a noticeable fullness beneath the 
neck, and were evidently far more powerful than are those of 
any cat, indicating that this animal could strike its head down- 
ward with enormous force. Again, while the cat's lower jaw 
has a wide gape, and can swing back on its hinges to an angle 
of over 90 degrees, a smilodon could open its mouth at least 30 
degrees more, thus giving room for full play by the long tusks. 
With the head thrown back, the lower jaw lying back almost 
upon the throat, it was able to strike its daggers deep into its vic- 
tim, and then, pulling backward, rip a deadly gash in the flesh. 
"It is fair to infer that the saber-tooth preyed upon creatures 
much larger than himself, for his means and methods of attack 
would be ineffective and unnecessary in the case of a small ani- 
mal. Moreover, his heavy build and short wide feet show that 
he was not agile or swift-footed, and the smaller animals had prob- 
ably little to fear from him. On the contrary, he was the chief or 
only enemy of the big pachyderms of his time, lying in wait 
for them, perhaps at their watering places, springing upon their 
backs, and gashing and bleeding them to death before they 
were able to shake him off and gore or trample upon him. 

"An animal of such habits might fulfill the legendary requirements of 
the 'King of Beasts' more nearly than does the lion. It would be bold and 
fearless of the most powerful, and it might well be thought to Heraldic 
exercise a 'magnanimous' forbearance toward the small and Llon - 
weak ones, since they were neither feared by it nor were its natural prey. 
It is curious to note several of the characters of the heraldic lion in the saber- 
tooth, — for instance, the vast mouth, long head, huge forequarters, and 
widely spreading claws. Surely one might fancy the designer of these 
horrifying creatures must have had some inspiration from an instinctive 
recollection of the smilodon as it appeared to our prehistoric ancestors." 

By the time this saber-toothed race had disappeared there had 
risen into prominence, corresponding with the rise of the long- 
necked, thin-skinned horses, cattle, antelopes, and the like, 

89 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

which superseded the pachyderms as they dwindled, the race 
of true cats, endowed with qualities better fitted to the new 
conditions — among others, better brains. These forms con- 
centrated during the early Miocene into the genus Felis, which 

has outlasted its saber- toothed cousins and flour- 
Rise of Cats. . 

ishes to-day. "According to present knowledge," 

remarks Woodward, "they [the Felidaej seem to have gradually 
evolved in the Old World, first migrating to North America 
at the close of the Pliocene period, and thence eventually 
reaching South America." Many extinct species are to be 
found in all the later deposits, some of which lasted until exter- 
minated by man, e.g. the "cave lion," whose bones lie in 
the caverns and river gravels of Europe, sometimes bearing 
marks of human weapons; but it was probably not different 
from the African lions of to-day. In the western United States, 
about the same time, there roamed several tigerlike cats, in 
whose killing the Stone-age men of this country may have had 
a part. They were the equal or perhaps the superior of the 
lion, at any rate were far more formidable than our modern 
pumas or jaguars. 

Puma, Jaguar, and Tiger Cats 

No better example of this splendid feline race could be taken 
than our American puma. Until the invasion of his domain by 
civilization, he possessed the whole continent from near Hudson 
Bay to the Strait of Magellan. No other land animal whatever 
has so great a north-and-south range; and when one thinks 
of the wide contrasts in climate and conditions generally to 
which it must accommodate itself, one would expect to find a 
bewildering variety of forms. On the contrary, it would be 
hard to find a species so uniform as this. There is little or 
nothing by which any man might say whether a certain skin 
came from the Orinoco jungles, or the Patagonian pampas, 
or from some cold canyon in the Rockies. 

9Q 



NAMES FOR THE PUMA 

The earliest visitors to this continent mistook the skins they 
saw in the hands of the Indians for those of true lions, or rather 
of lionesses, for they missed the mane. Our "mountain lion" 
is a survival of this, strengthened by the fact that the Spanish- 




Copyrieht. N. Y. Zoological Society. 

The American" Puma, or Mountain Lion. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



speaking people from California to Cape Horn still say leon. 
In New England, however, a worse error took its place, giving 
it the name panther, or "painter," as Natty Bumppo and 
his tribe pronounced it. "Puma" is Peruvian, and the best 

91 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

name, because, in addition to its being a native and an easy 
word, it alone appears to refer to this very animal ; for " cougar" 
is a made word, coined or borrowed by Buffon. 

As has been implied, the adult puma has no spots whatever, 
except that the lips are black, with a patch of white on each 
side of the muzzle, the outer rim of the ear is black, and some- 
times the tip of the tail. Its upper parts may be a uniform 
pale fox-red, or anything from that to slaty blue. This difference 
in color has nothing to do with age, sex, season, or locality. The 
throat, belly, and inside of the legs are white. 

As to size, no satisfactory evidence exists of a length greater 
than eight feet from tip of nose to tip of tail, and the average 
of "large ones" will fall well below seven feet and a weight of 
200 pounds ; the amount of individual variation is astonishing. 

The comparative fullness of its skull forward gives to the head 
a rounded solidity not usual in cats, and lends to the face an 
expression of intelligence quite different from the flat-headed, 
brutish ferocity of many feline countenances — nor does this 
wholly belie its nature. 

This handsome beast seems never to have been very numerous 
in the East. Their mating is no doubt temporary save where 
they are so few that there is little or no choice; but the males 
travel long distances in their quest for partners, and it is then, 
if ever, that are heard the fearsome screams which have adorned 
so many a frontier tale. Females far outnumber males, partly, 
if Merriam is right, because more of that sex than of males are 
born, and partly because many young males are killed in their 
jealous battles with each other. The puma mother selects with 
Family care a secret home for her expected young, choosing 

Life - some cave or sheltered and inaccessible place among 

rocks, usually on some ledge attainable by a leap of which no 
other animal is capable — twenty feet, sometimes ; she is 
justly fearful of danger to the kittens she must often leave un- 
protected. In a flat country, like our southern states, where 

92 



A PUMA FAMILY 

there are no caves or rocks, "the lair of the cougar is generally 
in a very dense thicket, or in a cane brake. It is a rude sort of 
bed of sticks, weeds, leaves, and grasses or mosses, and where 
the canes arch over it, as they are evergreen, their long, pointed 
leaves turn the rain at all seasons of the year." 

The young are born as early as February in the Tropics, 
but in the North considerably later, after a gestation of about 
ninety-five days. Four or five kittens may come at a birth, 
but usually fewer, and more than two rarely survive long. At 
first they are spotted and the tail is ringed, which led some early 
writers into declaring them half-bred jaguars ! But any coun- 
tryman could have told them their mistake, and that, as in the 
similar case of lion v babies, these markings would mostly dis- 
appear in a few months. The cubs do not become well grown 
before the second summer, and until then associate with the 
mother and learn to hunt by watching her methods. A very 
charming picture of puma-kitten life and puma-mother care is 
drawn by the Sioux author, Dr. Eastman, in his book of stories 130 
of the "animal people." In the autumn the family is driven 
down from the high mountains by snow, and it is then they 
become most troublesome to the ranchman. Except in some 
of the wilder parts of the Appalachian and Ozark ranges, or 
in swamps along the Gulf coast, no pumas are now to be found 
east of the Great Plains; yet it is hardly more than a century 
since they inhabited the Highlands of the Hudson. 

As to the availability of young pumas as pets likely to remain 
safe companions for their masters after they begin to get their 
full size and strength, accounts differ greatly, as no doubt did 
the specimens tried. The most enlightening discussion of the 
matter, based upon an actual and most instructive experiment, 
may be read in J. Hampden Porter's masterly essay 126 on the 
puma as he knew it in South America. His final word is: "A 
loose beast of prey is not a fit associate for a nervous man." 

Dr. Merriam 48 concludes that in the Adirondacks the puma 

93 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

breeds only once in two years. If this be true it is a striking 
example of one of nature's limitations of these destructive 
beasts, which would seem at first thought to have a clear field 
for indefinite multiplication. But though their food is ordi- 
narily plentiful, and no active enemies are to be feared, at least 
outside the Tropics, there are certain insidious foes which they 
are powerless to resist, in the form of parasites (especially 
internal), taken into the system from the living animals on 
which the cat feeds — particularly from hares and other 
rodents. 

"In its essential habits and traits," says Roosevelt, 128 "the 
big, slinking, nearly unicolored cat seems to be much the same 
everywhere, whether living in mountain, open plain, 
or forest, under arctic cold or tropic heat. When 
the settlements become thick it retires to dense forest, dark 
swamp, or inaccessible mountain gorge, and moves about only 
at night. In wilder regions it not infrequently roams during 
the day, and ventures freely into the open. Deer are its cus- 
tomary prey when they are plentiful, bucks, does, and fawns 
being killed indifferently. Usually the deer is killed almost 
instantaneously, but occasionally there is quite a scuffle, in 
which the cougar may get. bruised, though, as far as I know, 
never seriously. It is also a dreaded enemy of sheep, pigs, 
calves, and especially colts, and when pressed by hunger a big 
male cougar will kill a full-grown horse or cow, moose or wapiti. 
It is the special enemy of mountain sheep. In 1886, while 
hunting white goats north of Clarke's Fork of the Columbia, I 
found them preying as freely on the goats as on the deer. It 
rarely catches antelope, but is quick to seize rabbits, other 
small beasts, and even porcupines." 

The panther was greatly dreaded by the early pioneers of 
New England and New York, but careful inquirers could find 
little foundation for their fears. De Kay asserts that he had 
never met with an instance of their having attacked a man. 

94 



BEHA VI OR TO WARDS MAN 



Ever}' hunter of his day represented them as always cowardly, 
and the weight of testimony ever since, and in all parts of the 
continent, confirms their awe of man and their prudence. The 
Brazilians dread the puma much less than the jaguar, and the 
Indians of our continent would rather meet it than a bear, 
yet both hold it in high respect, and among the Zunis it stands 
as chief of the "prey gods." 

Some extraordinary stories are told, by otherwise highly 
credible observers, of the beast's attitude toward man — 

Puma and Stories 
Man. which I 

have recounted and 

commented on at 

some length in my 

"Wild Neighbors. " 

It has happened in 

hundreds of cases, 

perhaps, that a 

puma would dog 

the trail of a man 

for days, or lurk 

about his camping 

place or shanty, 

without harming him; they have been met face to face by 

hundreds of persons and slunk away after a shout or a thrown 

stone ; yet now and then, as the records prove, one has followed 

his stalk by the deadly spring, or encountering a child has struck 

it down, or has attacked a man with tigerish ferocity. 

When the experience is almost universal that there is nothing 
a puma dreads and avoids so much as it does mankind, how shall 
such a contradiction be accounted for as follows ? " In the sum- 
mer of 1893 a ver Y l ar g e puma, in perfect health and vigor, walked 
one noonday into an extensive logging camp near Davis, West 
Virginia, traversed one wing of the long building in which the 

95 




Profile of a Puma. 



Browneil, Phot. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS . 

men employed slept, and without making any demonstration 
of hostility toward those who fled before him entered their 
dining room and helped himself to the meat on the table, 
after which he quietly passed out of a side door and was shot 
from a window." Does this betoken cowardice? Was it the 
bravado of ignorance ? Or was it simply cool daring — admi- 
rable courage? 

What shall be said of the tales told of the puma on the Argen- 
tine pampas by J. R. Spears, 127 W. H. Hudson, 35 and others 
regarded as competent and honest naturalists ? Hudson declares 
that although the puma there is undoubtedly a bold and coura- 
geous animal, yet the account given long ago by Azara, that it 
will never attack or threaten to hurt either man or child, even 
when found asleep, is not only true but actually understated. 
As a matter of fact, he says, it will not even defend itself against 
a man, though constantly persecuted because of its depreda- 
tions. Its ravages in some parts of Patagonia are so great that 
the raising of horses is unprofitable, and Mr. Hudson gives many 
most extraordinary stories of this friendliness, related to him as 
facts of personal experience by the plainsmen of his country, 
whose word otherwise he always trusted. Nor is he alone. 
Every traveler in Patagonia makes similar assertions; and 
W. A. Perry, 129 whose excellent account of the animal's habits in 
Oregon and neighborhood is supplemented by many stories of 
personal adventure, describes how several cougars there have 
insisted upon an unpleasantly close but seemingly playful 
acquaintance with, rather than have made an attack upon, hu- 
man beings. It is evident, at least, that the animal displays a 
very different disposition at one time or place than at another. 

Cougar hunting is practicable only with the aid of hounds, 
and success depends upon their skill. A pack will embrace 
Hunting several more or less houndlike dogs whose busi- 
the Puma. ness ft j s to scen t the trail of the puma, and follow 
it (and nothing else) until the beast is brought to bay, or, as is 

96 



PUMA HUNTING 

more likely, takes to the nearest tree. The superstitious antip- 
athy and fear these big cats feel toward a dog is comical in its 
intensity. A mean little cur, all alone, is often sufficiently terri- 
fying to send a puma in haste to climbing a tree maybe one 
hundred and fifty feet high. Having treed the cougar the dogs 
must announce it by barking, and keep it up until the hunter 
arrives. Good dogs have been known to sustain this noisy vigil 
for several hours, and to hold the quarry in place even all night. 
Meanwhile there have been trailing at the heels of the follow- 
ing hunter two or three other and probably heavier dogs, the 
fighters, whose business it is as soon as they hear the trailers 
barking "treed" to rush forward and take the brunt of the fight- 
ing, if any occurs. Often the cat makes no attempt to get away, 
but lets himself be shot in the tamest way. Again, he will bolt 
time after time, retreating from stronghold to stronghold, and 
fighting dogs and men resolutely. 

The chase is likely to be exciting, and many thrilling narra- 
tives of it might be chosen from the literature of western sport, 
but none is so spirited and altogether admirable as that writ- 
ten by President Roosevelt 128 out of his own adventures in 
Colorado and elsewhere. 

The puma is more widely known and familiar to us of the 
North, but at the head of the list in the South stands the ja- 
guar, — the biggest, handsomest, and most formidable of Amer- 
ican cats. Since it exactly takes the place in our tropical 
forests of the tiger of southern Asia, it is named "el tigre" 
throughout Spanish America, or "onca" (in Spanish, onza) 
among the Portuguese of Brazil. "Jaguar," "juarite, " and 
the like are derived from Guaranese Indian words explained 
at length by Azara. But the term "tiger" is as carelessly 
wrong as is "lion" for the puma, since the jaguar is not striped 
but spotted, so that it closely resembles a leopard. It is also 
of about the same size, — 6 to 7 J feet long from nose to tail- 
h 97 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

tip, and 150 to 175 pounds in weight, but has a bulkier body, 
bigger head, shorter and more massive limbs, and shorter tail ; 
hence, while less active and supple, it is perhaps more powerful 
than the leopard, and certainly is stronger than the puma. 
The ground color varies from the yellowish gray seen in arid 
Paraguay to almost red in the steaming equatorial swamps, 
while in the lower Orinoco Valley deep brown and black ones 
are common; but there is only one species. The coat is every- 
where spotted with black, not in the leopard's hollow rosettes, 







W 



The Jaguar. 



but forming variable and irregular groups, each group always 
inclosing a black central spot. 

The jaguar is most at home, perhaps, in the half-flooded 
forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, where it necessa- 
rily spends much of its time in trees ; but it abounds in the open 
country south of Brazil, especially along the reedy margins 
of the rivers. Azara m treats the animal with great fullness 
of information, and says that it was so plentiful in the La 
Plata Valley when the Spaniards began settling there, that two 
thousand a year were killed. It ascends the eastern foothills of 

98 



HABITS OF THE JAGUAR 

the Andes, is to be found northward throughout the warmer 
parts of Central America and Mexico into Texas, and once 
wandered eastward into the woodlands of Arkansas and Louisi- 
ana, but that was long ago. It is hard to see why it did not 
cross the Mississippi. Black jaguars are reputed to be much 
more savage than others, but this belief is not supported by 
facts; and Tschudi remarks that the Indians, at least those of 
Peru, think every black animal stronger or wickeder than light- 
colored ones. 

All accounts agree that where other food is plentiful men 
have little reason to dread an unprovoked attack, and that 
near civilization the jaguar as a rule is shy and Ha unts and 
timid. Nevertheless, a jaguar when hungry is not Hablts - 
only likely to leap on any human being — who, to his mind, is, 
of course, only a sort of animal which is rather hard to under- 
stand, but is good to eat — falling in his way, but will some- 
times haunt a traveling company for days. In this and in 
other traits, as well as in breeding habits, the jaguar resembles 
the cougar, which ranges over the same territory. The In- 
dians told Wallace that when one was met on a lonely path, 
the only safe way was to keep a bold front ; if a man turned to 
run, the jaguar was likely to jump on him. In the Amazonian 
wilderness these beasts have always been as much of a menace 
as are leopards in the interior of Africa. Early chronicles tell 
of places where the Indians made their huts in villages each 
surrounded by a high palisade as a defense against "tigres"; 
and Im Thurn 33 relates that even now the forest tribes in the 
interior of Guiana sleep in hammocks hung high enough above 
the ground to be out of reach of the jaguar's spring, and build 
fires around the trees to which the hammock ropes are tied. 
Innumerable instances of bold attacks on sleeping men, even 
when in closed huts or boats, occur in the older literature of 
our Tropics. Mission stations have had to be abandoned to 
escape inglorious martyrdom by both priests and converts. 

99 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The jaguar hunts the largest game of his country, — tapirs, 
deer, capybaras, and the manatee and cayman of the great 
water courses. Wherever domestic animals are reared it be- 
comes a destructive pest. For the most part, however, these 
cats subsist on capybaras and other rodents; and in the North 
are special enemies of the peccaries, striking down stragglers 
and then hastening up a tree out of the way of the furious herd 
of sharp-toothed pigs brought together by the squealing of the 
first victim. When these have grown tired of besieging the 
lazy brute overhead, and have gone off, it descends and makes 
its meal. Rarely found away from water, which seems as neces- 
sary to it as to the tiger, and thronging along the great rivers, 
it is not surprising to find that in such places as the reedy borders 
of the La Plata fish form its main diet, snatched from the water 
by the paw. On the Amazon it feeds largely on turtles, which 
it turns on their backs and scoops out of their shells with a 
neatness which astonished Humboldt ; then it digs up and feasts 
upon the eggs. It attacks the manatee in its own element, 
and has been seen "dragging out of the water this bulky ani- 
mal, weighing as much as an ox." Even the crocodile and 
cayman are regularly preyed upon. Its fondness for mon- 
keys is also well known, and it is hated and reviled by the 
monkeys with the same fury as leads the East Indian apes to 
chase and hurl sticks and bad language at the tiger. If the Brazil- 
ians may be believed, the jaguar takes advantage of this by 
tactics which so excite and infuriate the monkeys that they 
lose all sense of prudence, and then fall victims to panic; 
for this, probably, is all there is to the story of "fascination" 
by cat or snake. 

Ordinarily jaguars are hunted with a pack of dogs which 
follow the trail and drive the animal into a tree, where it is 
Hunting likely to make a better fight than does the puma, 
jaguars. Their silence in a battle, or when wounded, has 
often been remarked, although they are ordinarily rather 



HUNTING THE JAGUAR 

a noisy animal. Nor when brought to bay do they, ac- 
cording to Porter, whose chapter 126 on these beasts is full of 
valuable details, "make use of those stratagems that tigers 
constantly, and lions frequently, adopt for the purpose of in- 
timidating their assailants and causing them to retreat. It 
would appear that jaguars do not commonly make feigned 
assaults, but generally charge in earnest, with lightninglike 
rapidity and desperate determination." In The Field (Lon- 
don, Dec. 13, 1879) is described a Paraguayan method of 
pursuit which must have been very dangerous: — 

"The hunter very often chose to go alone rather than with any compan- 
ion — his dogs excepted ; these he would throw into the covert where it 
was supposed there might be a tiger, while he himself waited in a more open 
part of the forest, in the direction in which the beast would probably make. 
His weapons were one or two lances with short, stout blades, a forked stick 
as thick as one's arm below the elbow, the foot about four to five feet long, 
and the branches two and a half each, and a large knife. The left arm 
was thickly wrapped in a poncho. When the tiger was started, the hunter 
followed him till brought to bay ; and then kneeling on the right knee, and 
resting the end of the forked stick on the ground at his left foot, provoked 
a charge, which he received on the stick, at the same time stabbing the tiger 
with the lance in his right hand. I never actually saw a conflict of this sort, 
but have seen a tiger brought in dead by a man who had gone out a few 
hours before with no weapons but those described, and there was but one 
wound in the body, under the shoulder into the heart." 

Hudson 35 says that the guachos of northern Argentina cap- 
ture the jaguar with the lasso, and this strange weapon some- 
times paralyzes the animal with perplexity and terror. 

Tropical America possesses several small cats of unusual 
interest and many names. Thus the " tiger cat" of South 
America, the "manigordo" of Costa Rica, or the 
"ocelot" of Mexico is known to Texans as "leopard 
cat." From Oklahoma to southern Brazil it is always found 
in the woods, and especially in thickets. 167 It takes to the trees 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



for safety and for most of its food, in getting which it is ex- 
tremely active and bloodthirsty. Dr. Woodhouse wrote of it 
that in Texas it often carried off the game which a hunter shot 
before he had time to enter the thicket and pick it up. Even 
the Mexican cactus jungles have no terror for it ; for ocelot- 
skins are sometimes found to be fairly lined with cactus prickles 
lying flat and apparently causing no annoyance. Dampier, 
- /[ - vr>>-*r^ a |>,j^ ^— speaking of 
"* * ! ** "* * JBt the Spanish 

Main, re- 
r .^v^ p^ cords that : 

"Here are 
great num- 
bers of them. 
... But I 
have wisht 
them farther 
off when I 
have met 
them in the 
Woods ; be- 
cause their Aspect appears so very stately and fierce." 

The ocelot is about two and one half feet long in body, stands 
tall, and has a tail about twelve inches long. The color is 
grayish, mostly marked with large and small black- edged, 
fawn-colored spots, tending to run into oval or linear figures ; 
but individuals vary interminably. "As if not content with 
differing from its fellows," Elliot exclaims, with the impa- 
tience of a puzzled classifier, "an ocelot usually succeeds in 
exhibiting a distinct pattern on each of its sides!" But this 
irregularity makes the pelt, with its long, soft, pleasingly 
mottled fur, all the more desirable in the market, and vast 
numbers are annually collected by both red and white trappers. 
These cats are to be seen in most menageries, and have been 




The Ocelot, or Leopard Cat. 



SOUTH AMERICAN CATS 

kept in many a household as a family pet, but are of uncertain 
temper, and rather too fond of rough play ; yet some have been 
thoroughly gentle. 

Another beautifully and similarly striped and spotted for- 
est cat is the margay (Guaranese, mbaracaya), likewise so 
variable in color and markings that half a dozen „ 

... . Margay. 

names have been given to its varieties — one is 
the "cauzel" of Costa Rica. It is rather smaller than the 
ocelot and seems to be exclusively nocturnal, and to feed mainly 
on birds, which, judging by the conduct of captives, are stripped 
of all their feathers before they are eaten. This tiger cat is 
rarely if ever domesticated. The same region gives us a third 
cat, GeofTroy's, colored like a leopard, and one of the hand- 
somest of those depicted on Elliot's 134 sumptuous plates. 
Whether all these, the "ocelotlike" cat of Colombia, the "colo- 
colo" of Guiana, and other American tiger cats, will not finally 
turn out to be merely varieties of one widespread and sur- 
prisingly variable species, remains to be determined. Much 
information is still needed here. 

More distinctive is the grass or pampas cat, or "pajero," 
familiar to the people of the open country between Brazil and 
the Straits of Magellan. It is rather more robust p ampas 
than a domestic Tom, and its color is predomi- Cat - 
nantly gray, with a tan tinge and white whiskers, but no two 
are alike. Describing in The Field (London, 1897) one in his 
possession, W. Melville, an English resident near Buenos 
Ayres, gives the following facts : — 

" The tiger spots, just visible through the long fur on the sides, become 
beautifully mixed with stripes on the belly and legs; the tips of the ears are 
jet-black, and the tail very short and blunt. Few cats are ungainly walkers, 
yet the pajero does so with a very awkward roll, due to the phenomenal 
breadth of chest, causing the elbows to turn outward; the hindquarters 
have the appearance of being pinched ; the fur is almost as long as that of 
the Persian on the back and sides, the head of the pajero having very much 

103 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

shorter fur, and the tail being less full. Few, indeed, are the animals in a 
wild state that are unable to make a proper toilet, yet I have frequently 
killed these cats with the long, fluffy hair matted and soiled on the back, 
the matted locks being full of dead hair." 

As to habits, Azara mentions that it feeds mainly on guinea 
pigs, but Mr. Melville says that it preys upon the small tina- 
mou, or "pampas partridge," striking a "round" blow; "for" 
as he explains, "it is one of the distinguishing features of this 
cat that it can bend its forepaws back almost level with its 
body, catching thus its prey with a similar action to a round- 
hand bowler delivering a ball on the cricket field, and does 
not pounce on its prey as does the tiger cat (margay) and the 
domestic species." It remains always on the ground. Hud- 
son speaks of it as "inexpressibly savage" in disposition, but 
Melville's experience is that it is easily domesticated and makes 
a charming pet with all the manners and graces of Puss, except 
that it fails to mew, uttering only short, sharp, guttural sounds. 

Two notable little cats remain to be mentioned, — the yaguar- 
undi and the eyra. Both are entirely unspotted and have very 
long tails and round pupils. The yaguarundi, found in for- 
ests from Brazil and Peru to northern Mexico, where it is called 
"leoncillo," is about thirty inches long from snout to tail, while 
the tail adds twenty-five inches. It is very slender and short- 
legged, and varies in its uniform blackish gray hue (often red- 
dish) according to the worn condition of the hair, for each hair 
is ringed alternately with black and gray. Another pecul- 
iarity is the pinched appearance of the nose. It lives mostly 
in trees, and is an expert bird catcher and chicken thief. 

The eyra Mivart 135 declares "the .most remarkable of all 
the cats from the extreme length of its body in comparison to 
that of its limbs — a condition which gives it some- 
what the appearance of a large weasel." It inhab- 
its all the American Tropics, northward to Texas, but is no- 
where numerous. It is about the size of a house cat, has fur 

104 



THE LION IN ANCIENT SPORT 

of a soft chestnut hue with white whiskers and is nimble, quick, 
and exceedingly graceful both in climbing and when moving 
on the ground. Some captives have seemed untamable, 
while others were mild and playful ; but none could be trusted 
with poultry. Azara had one which was fond of curling up 
on the skirts of any one's garments to sleep or to lie and purr 
like a happy old tabby. It is a question whether the eyra and 
yaguarundi are not varieties of the same species. 

The Lion in Fact and Fable 

Amenemhat I, one of the oldest and grandest of the kings 
of Egypt, 2000 years before Christ, thought it worth while to 
record imperishably : "I hunted the lion." That has been a 
proud boast among men of valor ever since. No animal since 
the beginning of the world has been so interesting to men gen- 
erally, nor received more fearsome admiration. Its majestic pose 
when aroused, its terrifying roar, its power to harm, its appar- 
ent supremacy, gave it naturally the rank of king in the minds 
of a world which saw no reason why the animal tribes should 
not acknowledge a ruler as well as the tribes of men. 

The ancient hunting of the lion must often have been a soul- 
stirring performance, — a hand-to-hand conflict calling for the 
best in nerve and muscle a man possessed. David's seizing 
one, and tearing its jaws asunder by main strength, was a deed 
matched later by one of his captains, Benaiah (2 Sam. xxiii. 
20) : "He cut down also and slew a lion in the midst of the pit 
in the time of snow" ; and it won for him promotion to be chief 
of staff. These incidents can hardly have been great exagger- 
ations of the encounters in which shepherds and hill men, from 
the Libyan desert to the plains of Persia, defended their flocks 
and themselves, when all depended on driving home a short 
pike. What marvels of courage and luck might be written, 
could the facts of any of a thousand such battles be recovered ! 

io 5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Pausanias tells us of a Greek athlete, Polydamas, who slew a 
lion at the foot of Mt. Olympus, although he was unarmed. 

In the palmy days of the Roman Empire every prominent 
city had its corps of bestiarii, men whose business it was to fight 
wild beasts in the arena for the amusement of the crowd ; but 
we have no information as to their methods. A Hamran 
Arab of western Abyssinia does not hesitate even now, when 
necessary, to face the lion on foot, armed only with a sword 
and small shield, and in that wonderfully interesting book 
"Wild Beasts and their Ways," 147 Sir Samuel Baker describes 
how on one occasion one of his Arab hunters did precisely 
that, and saved the lives of both, for as this determined fellow 
marched slowly forward the lion, instead of rushing to attack, 
crept like a coward into impenetrable thorns, and was seen 
no more. 

Such incidents give color to the contemptuous view which 

Livingstone and some others have taken of the lion, which they 

brand as anything but noble — as an arrant cow- 
Character. IT?. • 1 1-1 

ard, in truth. Livingstone writes that nothing he 
ever learned of the lion could lead him to attribute to this ani- 
mal either the ferocious or the noble character so often ascribed 
to it; and tells us how hardly he tried, even with the aid of 
dogs, to persuade one he had chased into some reeds to come 
out and show itself — and be shot ! The lion's refusal here 
seems not so much an evidence of poltroonery as of good sense, 

— that discretion permitted to the most valorous without 
stain on their reputations. Many a hunter has had an experi- 
ence like that of R. Gordon Cumming, who, with mounted 
helpers and a pack of dogs, drove a lion for hours from shelter 
to shelter, along a river, before he succeeded in shooting it 
while the harried beast was trying to get away by swimming 
the broad stream. Cumming assures us, also, it was an animal 
in the prime of life, with a rank mane and a perfect set of teeth 

— "a thing which in lions of his age is rather unusual." 

1 06 



ROVING IN DAYLIGHT 

All this happened in the daytime, and hundreds of instances 
might be given of their being out and busily hunting in broad 
daylight. Among the imaginative absurdities which BurTon 
wove into what he supposed was a biography of this animal, 
and which still linger in popular books, was one that the lion's 
sight is poor, and that he is blinded by sunlight. A man who 
trusted to this for safety would be as insecure as one who rested 
upon the "power" of his own eye to outstare the big cat. No 
animal has its eyes better set for seeing what is going on than 
this one; and there is every evidence that its vision is both 
far-sighted and accurate in definition. 

One is tempted to think the Lord must have watched over 
the noble missionary Livingstone, as He did over Daniel, when 
we read his assertion that he never felt the least alarm as to 
lions in either daylight or 
moonlight, for no one since 
has had such confidence. A. 
H. Neumann, 136 who had an 
astonishing hunting career BoNES OF A LlON . s T ~ 

among the game Of Central Showing the great tendon by which the claw 

Africa in 1894-1895, tells us is unsheathed and held down when used - 
how he shot two lionesses at the carcasses of some zebras 
killed the day before. It was a hot sunny midday, and he 
had dreaded the task of taking off their hides. "But before 
skinning them," he writes, "I looked across the open plain 
below us; and there on the far side, skirting just inside the 
scattered bush, I saw a whole troop of lions, led by a grand 
old male, the rest either females or immature males, evidently 
coming from the zebra carcasses. I counted up to ten, and 
then before I had finished they got mixed up among the bushes ; 
but I am certain there were at the very least (to be quite on 
the safe side) three more, which, with my two, would make 
fifteen all together." 
This incident, confirmed by a vast experience elsewhere, 

107 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

disposes of three old errors : First, that this beast always hunts 
alone, or at most in couples; second, that it does not go 
Predatory abroad by daylight ; third, that it is too proud or fas- 
Methods, tidious to eat what it has not itself freshly killed. 
Incidentally it also implies the truth of the statement, of which 
direct evidence is difficult to obtain, that the lion is apolyga- 
mist — may consort with more than one lioness at a time ; and 
it is probable that most troops of lions consist of members of 
a single family group of various ages. Frequently mates hunt 
together, having no cubs, or leaving them at home; and two 
or several males often join for work in concert. Lord Dela- 
mere met with several such instances in Somali land. 151 One 
was a case of three, all with fine manes, leaping on a pony and 
its native rider. The rider escaped by a flying leap into a 
thorn bush, whereupon the lions knocked down and calmly 
ate the pony on the spot, regardless of other hunters nearby, 
showing that the custom of dragging the quarry away and 
hiding it is by no means invariable. In fact, you never know 
what a lion will do. In the face of one, a gun is far better than 
a guidebook to its habits ! The other was a case where Lord 
Delamere arranged to stop the depredations of a lioness which 
had been prowling near his camp, and would probably come 
back that night. His men constructed a little fort of thorns, 
tied a donkey near by as a bait, and Delamere, with a So- 
mali, lay down in it to watch for the animal. The marauder 
came but offered no shot, and Delamere presently fell asleep. 

" It was a lovely night, but even by the brightest moonlight a lion is 
not a very easy thing to see. There was an open glade in front of the 
Night donkey, and at last, standing right out in the open, I saw two 

Forays. lions. ... As I watched they suddenly started and came 
racing towards us side by side like two enormous dogs. When the lions 
got up to the donkey they did not seem to stop in their rush, but donkey 
and lions all went down in a crash together. How they actually knocked 
him over I did not see, as at the moment I drew back my head involun- 

108 



ADVEXTL'RES IN NIGHT SHOOTIXG 

tarily, because, although we were absolutely safe inside a mass of mimosa 
thorns, the whole thing felt unpleasantly close. When I looked out again 
I could easily have touched one of the lions, which was standing with its 
forepaws on the donkey and its hindquarters within a few inches of our 
fence. The other lion was standing on the far side looking me straight 
in the face; but I am sure he could not see me, as the moon was right in 
his eyes, making them shine as if they were alight." 




nell, Phot. 



His Majesty, the Lion. 



Both these prowlers were killed. Commenting on this and 
similar experiences, Lord Delamere says : — 



" Xight-shooting to my mind is a thing to be avoided, except now and 
then as an experience. It generally means a very disturbed night, espe- 
cially if there are many hyenas about, and in the morning you are not 
fit for a hard day's work. Occasionally by bright moonlight it is very 
interesting, but if circumstances admit of lions being killed by day, it is 
rather like shooting a boar in a fine pig-sticking country to kill a lion 

109 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

over a bait at night. ... I have never myself shot more than two lions 
in one night, but a man whom I met in the country showed me the skins 
of four he had shot when sitting up over the body of a dead elephant. It 
was very dark or he might have got any number." m 

One of the statements often met with is that a lion is inca- 
pable of any considerable speed, and never chases prey which 
escapes his first rush. Baldwin is only one of many who have 
found that it may put a horse to his best paces to keep a lion 
who really wants a ride from climbing into the saddle by way of 
the crupper. Another hunter relates that he once saw a heavy 
lion which had failed to stalk successfully a black gnu chase 
it fifteen hundred yards, although it had had a long start, and 
fairly catch it. So the exceptions go ; yet the rule is, that the 
great cat lies in wait by some drinking place, or rushes from a 
hiding in a thicket or on a rock whence it may spring far, or 
creeps through tall grass until near enough for the leap, the fell- 
ing blow, and the clutch with talons and teeth, which at once drag 
down and tear apart the stricken quarry. It is at night that the 
most serious hunting is done. The dusk deepening on the 
veldt resounds with the roars of ravenous lions setting forth 
upon their forays, careless whether the game hear and take 
warning; and no ox or antelope, stately giraffe or timid ga- 
zelle, approaches its drinking place — especially when this 
is only some spring-fed basin in the plain — without a shrink- 
ing dread which nothing but thirst could overcome, for in every 
wind-stirred grass tuft he thinks he sees a lion's gathering 
spring, and each shadow takes the shape of this deadly terror 
of the night. 

Another tradition is that a lion having chosen a mate keeps 

her as long as one or the other survives. How nearly true 

this is we do not know. In the first place, the 

Mating. . r 

choice seems to lie with the female rather than on 
the part of the male ; and the continuance of the union appears 
to depend upon the power of the lion to hold his fickle spouse 



THE LION'S COURTSHIP 

to her allegiance. At the mating season of the year the lioness 
is ready to flirt with every new male she sees — in truth does 
her best to attract attention. Should a wandering knight 
answer her roaring, and appear on the edge of the moonlit 
glade which serves as her boudoir, the lioness, purring a wanton 
welcome, creeps forward to meet him. But her mate, with 
burning eyes and lifted mane and lashing tail, bounds before 
her, and the air quakes with his indignant challenge. It may 




After an etching by van Muy 



Lioness and Cubs. 



be sufficient, and the abashed intruder slink away; but if he 
does not, the forest soon trembles with the shock of such a duel 
as it would tax the epic pen of a Homer to depict: and the 
lithelv crouching lioness watches the struggle in tense excite- 
ment, ready to glory in her lord if he win, or to fawn upon the 
stranger should he become conqueror. 

To the frequency of such battles, in which young, weak or unfortunate 
males must often be killed, is supposed to be due the fact that in Africa, at 
least, females far outnumber the males. This is nature's merciless method 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

of weeding out the worst and discovering and saving the best to become 
sires of a race which shall inherit, with each new generation, the qualities 
of the best of its kind. To this custom of courtship by battle is attributed, 
also, the growth of the protective mane which no doubt saves many a life 
in these combats, wherein nature must not permit too high a death rate. 
Any such inequality of numbers between the sexes as certainly exists, would 
naturally result in the polygamy alluded to, some lions, it has been stated, 
having as many as five wives. Much remains to be learned, however, in 
this direction; and it will probably be found, if it be possible to discover 
the truth at this late day, that polygamy is rather exceptional. 

Leo's family home is in some dense thorn thicket, reed 
bed, or cavern, where in the spring from two to six whelps are 
born — usually four. He is reputed to be good to his family, 
bringing his mate food while she is kept at home in nursing 
her newly arrived babies, and defending his household from 
danger. Pleasant stories are related also of the mother's care 
for her mottled cubs; and when they get large enough to go 
abroad with her she guides and controls them. Thus she has 
been seen to compel them to stay back and keep quiet when she 
sights prey and wishes to stalk it ; and so they see how the work 
is done. More often than in the case of other cats, apparently, 
the father Hon leads the family hunt and strikes down the 
victim, his mate waiting near ready to lend a hand. Here, 
in the old books, would follow tales of "magnanimity," with 
moral reflections whose only defect lay in having no founda- 
tion in fact. Instead of standing back and politely allowing 
his "beloved" family to satisfy their hunger (and inciden- 
tally consume the tidbits) before him, an old lion will far more 
likely, as in the lionine family meal watched by Drummond, 144 
crossly keep them away until he has eaten all he wants. Only 
then may the others approach to get what they can, leaving 
the bones to be cracked by hyenas and scraped by jackals — 
both of which are liable to be pounced on and devoured them- 
selves. None sits at the first table in a lion's house unless he 
is as strong as the host. 

112 



FEEDIXG HABITS AND FARE 

The lion feeds on anything he can get. He has been starved 
out rather than killed out of Asia, and survives in Mesopo- 
tamia and eastern Persia mainly on the half-wild Distribu- 
pigs and goats of the peasantry. In prehistoric tion * 
days there were wild horses, asses, and camels to sustain him 
on the Asian steppes, as well as saigaks and similar game; 
and afterward he naturally became a scourge of the caravan 
roads. Increasing by their high birth rate more rapidly than 
any other beast of prey, only persistent resistance could keep 
down these ravagers; thus, when the Jews came back from 
their long captivity in Babylon they found Judea overrun 
with lions. Later, when Xerxes' hordes were moving through 
the mountainous country northwest of the iEgean Sea, on 
their way to overwhelm Greece, serious hindrance was caused 
by the attacks of lions on their camel trains. Buffon's asser- 
tion that in the Sahara a single lion would attack a whole cara- 
van is not true, as a rule, if it ever happened — there. Lions 
are practically absent from the real desert, where there is 
little chance for food ; and this is a point to be noticed in re- 
spect to the hasty conclusion that their dust-colored hide is a 
protective coloration with reference to a background of sand. 
Densely forested regions, such as certain areas of West Africa, 
are likewise without lions, which also in India have left the 
jungles to the tiger. 

The grazers have everywhere been the lion's principal re- 
source, but no wart hog, daman, or other small animal is re- 
fused when it comes handy; and any lion, apparently, will 
gorge carrion, even if full of maggots, or even when it is the 
carcass of another Hon. Laziness is one of this beast's most 
prominent traits, and to this may be due his willingness to eat 
carrion, and also the fact that he rarely kills except for food, 
not manifesting that Berserker-like blood thirst which leads 
a puma, leopard, or weasel to slay uselessly when opportunity 
occurs. His apparent cowardice may often be really indolence, 
i 113 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The elephant, rhinoceros, and hippo are ordinarily safe from 
attack, more probably because of the difficulty and danger of 
overcoming them rather than from any sense of fear. 
Porter 126 quotes a narrative of a remarkable struggle 
with an Indian lion some fifty years ago, by two British sports- 
men mounted on elephants, and aided by an army of beaters. 
The arrangements, in short, were the same as for a tiger hunt, 
and the lion carried out his part of the programme perfectly, 
charging again and again though badly wounded, repeatedly 
leaping upon the elephants and tearing them until they became 
nearly uncontrollable, killing a beater or two and endangering 
everybody, and making a splendid display of courage and 
endurance against fearful odds until the last. Here the fear 
was on the part of the elephants, which the lion attacked (as 
though his real enemies) without an instant's hesitation. 

An African buffalo is more nearly a true match for a lion, as 
many a pair of skeletons mingled in the grass has attested — 
none more remarkably than in one case described by Cameron 145 
near Lake Tanganyika : — 

"During my rambles," he notes, "I noticed the remains of a lion, buffalo 
and crocodile, lying together in a heap, and was told . . . that when the 
buffalo came to drink the lion sprang upon him, and, both rolling into the 
water together, they were seized by a crocodile. He in his turn was dragged 
about twenty yards from the bank by the struggles of the two beasts, and 
then the trio perished in inextricable entanglement." 

A single lion, indeed, will rarely attack a buffalo; and two 
or three together are sometimes beaten off. Nevertheless this 
great animal is so constantly assailed, that on every occasion 
when Drummond 144 saw lions hunting by daylight they were 
in pursuit of this game. This judicious observer considered 
the zebra the lion's favorite food, on account of the succulent 
fat in its body ; but these wild horses are extremely cautious. 
Another reason for the preference is their small ability to defend 
themselves when caught, whereas several of the large antelopes 

114 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

can fight off a lion or leopard as well as the buffalo, doing it, 
however, more after the manner of a swordsman. Schulz, 
whose book 152 is a storehouse of facts for the student of African 
zoology, notes that a lion does not dare attack such antelopes 
as the sable or roan in the usual manner, i.e. from behind, 
for with their backward-sweeping, scimiterlike horns they would 
transfix him the instant he alighted on their haunches. But 
even seizing by the nose becomes perilous in the case of so well 
armed a species as the gemsbok, or any oryx, which, Schulz 
asserts, with its straight horns capable of acting both behind 
and before, coupled to its heroic spirit, is the most formidable 
animal the lion can attack. 

How do the human tenants of his realm get on with this 
terrible neighbor? The beast everywhere disappears before 
Lion determined and well-armed opposition, but other- 

and Man. w j se humanity simply becomes a part of its food 
resources. When in the flourishing period of Rome the colonists 
in North Africa were forbidden to kill lions because hundreds 
must be captured alive annually for the Imperial circus games, 
they became at last such an unendurable scourge to agriculture 
and travel that the Emperor Honorius was obliged to choose 
between his playthings and the lives of his taxpayers, and allow 
the former to be killed off. Were the African negroes the pusil- 
lanimous creatures that many East Indians are, their continent 
would be practically uninhabitable, but most Africans are brave 
folk, and are little hindered by a craven beast worship, such as 
shields the tiger in many parts of India. The nearest approach 
to that is hinted at in a remarkable yarn told to Cameron 145 
by one of his men in Kasongaland, southwest of Lake Tan- 
ganyika. 

"In the village next to that in which he [Cameron's informant] lived 
the people were on most friendly terms with the lions, which used to walk 
in and about the village, without attempting to injure any one. On great 
occasions they were treated to honey, goats, sheep, and ugali, and some- 

116 



NEGROES AND LIONS 

times at these afternoon drums as many as two hundred lions assembled. 
Each lion was known to the people by name, and to these they responded 
when called. And when one died the inhabitants of the village mourned 
for him as for one of themselves." 

Many apparently honest natives vouched for the truth of 
this as eyewitnesses, but Cameron tells us to judge of it for 
ourselves. At any rate, such a sentiment is not widespread. 
As a rule the negroes fear lions little in the daytime, but where 
they are numerous guard their encampments carefully at night 
against them and the equally dreaded leopards. While some 
tribes will suffer long-continued raids upon their cattle, or even 
repeated losses of women and children, others instantly proceed 
against the marauder, for they know when one of these great 
cats has learned that it is easy to seize a man or a bullock it 
will continue to do so, and that it is quite as likely to be young 
and vigorous as aged and decrepit. The BufTonian fallacy 
that the nobility of the lion forbids him to attack anything but 
wild big game, "worthy of his steel," was long ago discredited 
by awful experience. 

Even before the days of guns, a party of bold hunters would 
track him to his lair, and kill him with arrows and assegais, or 
would catch him in a pitfall and smother him to savage 
death with smoke. Andersson describes how non- Llon Hunts - 
chalantly half a dozen Damaras near Walfisch Bay hastened 
into the brush at midnight to drive a lion from a zebra he 
had been heard to strike down, and stayed to cut it up and 
carry it away, although the angry beast was marching up and 
down so near that they hurled firebrands at him now and then 
to warn him off. Andersson adds that he knew of bands which 
subsisted largely by watching beside water-holes where lions 
came nightly to feed, and then driving the lions away from 
their well-earned quarry. 

In some tribes, as the Zulus, an army would be ordered out 
by a chief to surround a man-eater as soon as he became trouble- 

117 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



some ; and then would be seen a grand display of savage war- 
fare, in which the enemy's magnificence of rage and power 
against overwhelming odds would surpass anything imagined 
of him. Drummond draws a thrilling picture of such a com- 
bat, and Freeman, Baker, and others confirm its truth. 

Some of these animals show amazing boldness in their noctur- 
nal forays. The story of the lion which leaped upon Gordon 
Cumming's 142 party, and seized one of two men sleeping under 
the same blanket beside the fire, is familiar to all readers of 
adventure tales. The history of frontier Africa abounds in 
similar bloody incidents, and makes it plain that at times noth- 
ing daunts the great 
beast. Gibbons, for 
example, says that 
a lion gnawed 
through a palisade 
of stakes of the 
thickness of a man's 
arm to get at cattle 
and human beings 
in a kraal he visited. 
Nevertheless the 
strength, though 
astonishing, has been overstated. One is certainly able to 
drag away into the bushes the carcass of a big buffalo; but 
Baker, one of the sanest and best-informed of men, refuses 
assent to the stories of lions leaping high fences with buffaloes 
in their jaws ; or that they could even carry anything approach- 
ing its weight. The Tsavo lions, described below, jumped 
no fences with their victims, but dragged them through the 
hedges; but one was known to take away three full-grown 
goats and a two-hundred- and- fifty- pound iron rail to which 
they were tied. 

Man-eaters have never been so numerous in Africa as in the 

118 




The King Rests. 



MAX- EATERS IN UGANDA 

East, yet every district has tales of such pests. The most 
striking is that of the two lions which for three weeks, as the 
culmination of a long period of terror, "held up" the Uganda 
railway, then (1898) building across the valley of the Athi 
River in British East Africa. Encamped at a point named 
Tsavo was a construction force of several hundred East Indian 
coolies and workmen, besides many negro helpers and camp 
followers, superintended by an English engineer and army 
officer, Colonel J. H. Patterson and some assistants — the 
former a man of heroic mold, as so many of his countrymen 
in similar positions have proved themselves to be ! 

The very first night of the encampment "one or two coolies disap- 
peared," no one knew exactly how; but soon after a powerful Sikh fore- 
man was dragged from his tent in the midst of the camp by a Tsavo 
lion, taken into the bush and eaten. That night Colonel Patter- Lions. 
son sat up in a tree near the jemadar's tent and listened to the screams 
which told that another man had been snatched from sleep and life in a 
more distant part of the scattered camp. To hunt the animals by day in the 
jungle was utterly futile. . . . Colonel Patterson and the station doctor 
built a thorn fence around their tent, but had little confidence in it; and, as 
the former remarks in a detailed account of the affair in The Field (London, 
Feb. 17 and 24, 1900), "it was jumpy work to sit reading or writing 
there after dark, as we never knew but that a lion might spring over the 
boma and be on us." 

In spite of concentrating the camps, keeping fires and watchers, every 
second or third night a man was taken, several times from the hospital. 
Continual efforts to see and shoot the man-eaters met with failure, and 
proved exceedingly dangerous. One night the Colonel and another man 
placed themselves inside a freight car standing on the track and waited, 
only to be surprised by a lion leaping at the door and falling back from the 
blaze of guns in his face after he had alighted on the floor of the car. Other 
sportsmen came to camp and sat up with guns at various likely places 
over night, laid traps and tracked the brutes by daylight, but got neither of 
them, for it was now well ascertained that there were two working in com- 
pany; and the murders continued. 

Then came an unaccountable quiet, and after six months of peace every 
one believed the danger passed, when suddenly the man-eaters reappeared, 

119 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and night after night the former dreadful scenes were reenacted. The 
lions grew so bold as to be indifferent to shots, firebrands, or noise, some- 
times calmly devouring their victims almost on the spot where they were 
seized. "I have," says Colonel Patterson, "a vivid recollection of one 
particular night when they took a man from the railway station and brought 
him close to my camp to eat. I could distinctly hear them crunching the 
bones and purring like cats over the meal. ... I have experienced nothing 
more nerve-shaking than to listen, after darkness had closed in, to the deep 
roars of these monsters growing gradually nearer and nearer, and to know 
that one or the other of us had to be their victim before the morning 
dawned." The men took to sleeping on top of buildings, water tanks, 
trees, and in like places, yet some one was taken nightly; many ran away, 
even seizing trains by which to escape; all construction of the railroad 
ceased, and the great Lord Salisbury informed Parliament (in effect) that 
the British lion was no match for two African ones. This state of siege 
continued for weeks, but at last the persistent and plucky efforts of the 
superintendent were rewarded. 

"My continued ill luck was most exasperating. The Indians were, of 
course, further confirmed in their belief about a devil, and, indeed, the lions 
seemed to bear a charmed life. ... I tried to track the beast I felt sure I 
had wounded, but could not keep on the trail; there was no blood on the 
rocks to give a clew which way he had gone. I returned to look at the dead 
donkey, which I found slightly eaten at the quarters. Lions always begin 
at the tail of an animal and eat up toward the head. It was practically 
certain that one or other of the lions would return at night to finish the meal. 
There was no tree of any size near, so within ten yards of the dead donkey 
I made a staging about twelve feet high of four poles, with their ends fixed 
in the ground. They inclined toward each other at the top, where a plank 
was lashed for me to sit on. 

"At sundown I got on the machan. Much to the disgust of my gun- 
bearer I went alone. I would have taken him, only he had a cough, and 
I feared lest any noise or movement should spoil all. Darkness fell almost 
immediately. The silence of an African jungle about this time is most 
impressive, especially when one is alone and isolated from his kind, for man 
has retired, and the wild denizens of the woods have not yet raised their 
cry. I was startled out of the reverie I had fallen into by the snapping of 
a twig, and, straining my ears, I heard the rustling as of a large body forc- 
ing his way through the bushes. 'The lions,' I whispered to myself, and 
my heart gave a great bound. 'Surely, to-night my luck will change, and 
I shall bag one of the monsters.- Such were my thoughts during the still- 



END OF THE TSAVO LIONS 

ness that had again fallen. I sat like a statue and waited. Soon all doubt 
as to the presence of the lions was dispelled. A deep, long-drawn sigh (sure 
sign of hunger in a lion) came up from the bushes, and again the rustling 
commenced as they advanced. A sudden stop, followed by an angry growl, 
told that one of them had spied me, and I began to think disappointment 
awaited me once more. However, matters took another turn, and the 
lions began to stalk me. For about two hours they horrified me by slowly 
creeping round and round my machan, gradually drawing closer. I feared 
they would rush it, and if one of the rather flimsy poles broke, or if they 
could spring twelve feet — ugh ! the thought was not a pleasant one. I 
began to feel distinctly creepy, and heartily cursed my folly for placing my- 
self in such a position. 

"I kept perfectly still, hardly daring even to blink my eyes. Down 
below I could but faintly make out the body of the donkey. Imagine what 
I felt like when, after a continued strain like this, something came flop and 
hit me on the back of the head. I was thoroughly terrified for a moment, 
and almost fell off the plank. I thought it was one of the lions that had 
sprung at me from behind. A moment afterward I knew I had been 
struck by an owl, which, no doubt, had taken me for a branch of a tree — 
not a very alarming thing to happen, I admit, but, coming at the time it 
did, it almost paralyzed me. I was not kept long in suspense after this. 
One of the lions crept up to the donkey; I could just make out his form as 
he crouched among the whitish yellow undergrowth; still, I saw enough. 
I took careful aim as near as I could in the direction of his heart, and as 
he wrenched off his first mouthful I fired. A bound and a roar told rne he 
was hit. His bound had taken him out of sight, but he was evidently 
badly wounded, as he did not go far, and I emptied my magazine in the direc- 
tion from which his dying roars came. In a few moments his last groan 
had rattled in his throat, and I knew that one of the 'devils' was dead." 

It was not until some weeks later, however, that the second man-eater 
succumbed, after giving Mr. Patterson an even more thrilling experience, 
and work could be safely resumed. It would be difficult to find a more 
exciting episode in all the romantic history of railway building. 

The lion, like the other great cats, is a relic of a diminishing 
race and dominion. In the early Stone Age the "cave" lion 
roamed throughout the southern half of Europe; and it is 
believed that along the Mediterranean, at least, its extinction 
was due to prehistoric man. The battle has gone on ever 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

since. Long ago lions were exterminated from Afghanistan, 

Belli chistan, and northern Persia. A century ago they were more 

or less prevalent in northwestern India, but now 

Indian Lions. 

none remain save a few in the Gheer, a wooded hilly 
tract of Kattiawar, where they are "to some extent preserved 
by the Nawabs of Joonaghoor." 214 In Persia they survive 
only in Farsistan, where the marshes about Niris Lake afford 
shelter, and the hosts of pigs feeding on the acorns of the oak 
forests furnish subsistence. Similar conditions enable a few 
lions to maintain themselves along the lower Euphrates and 
Tigris; but they were long ago exterminated from all Asia 
Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria. From Abyssinia, 
and the southern Sahara southward to the Orange River, lions 
still exist except in the most populous districts, and in some 
places are very numerous. Very few skins now reach the Lon- 
don fur-market, where good specimens, suitable for rugs, 
brought in 1905 from $500 to $1000. 

There seems never to have been more than one species, nor, 
in spite of the former belief in the "maneless lions of Guzerat" 
and the " black-maned " ones of other places, is any variety 
well localized. Lions with full manes have been shot in India, 
as well as those with hardly any; and "out of fifty male lion- 
skins scarcely two will be found alike in color and length of 
mane." So says Selous, in whose books 150 will be found more 
that is worth reading about this beast than anywhere else. 

A lion of large size measures about nine and a half feet from the nose to 
the tip of the tail, which is about three feet long; stands three and a half 
feet high at the shoulders; and weighs about five hundred pounds. Most 
specimens, however, fall far short of these figures; and the largest exam- 
ples have come from South Africa. The uniform pale tawny or yellowish 
gray of its coat is both adaptive to the animal's customary surroundings 
and a mark of the antiquity of its race, for the spots which reappear in each 
young kitten are regarded as outgrown markings, as in the case of the puma 
and other concolorous cats. A completely black lion has not, so far as I 
know, been recorded) J?ut now and then very dark ones are seen, from 

122 



RANGE OF THE TIGER 

perhaps the same litter with almost silver-white ones ; and more frequently 
the mane is darker than the coat, or is diversified with blackish patches. 
The lioness is somewhat smaller than her mate and has no mane, nor have 
the young males. It is recorded that hybrids were produced between a 
lion and a tiger in England in 1827, and the skin of what is believed to be 
one of this mongrel litter is preserved in Salisbury museum, and resembles 
a leopard inclined to be striped. Similar crosses have taken place recently 
in the Hagenbeck menagerie near Hamburg.' 248 

Tiger and Leopard and Leopard Cats 

Though so different in outward appearance, the gaudily 
uniformed tiger and khaki-dressed lion have many points in 
common. It would require an expert to tell their skeletons 
apart, except by comparison of skulls. The size and weight 
of average examples are about the same, only the very largest 
males exceeding six and a half feet in length, measured from 
the nose to the root of the tail in a straight line; the tail, which 
tapers to a point, adding about three feet. Females are always 
twelve or fifteen inches shorter than males. 

The present distribution of the species is curiously broken. 
It is to be found in the mountains and swamps around the 
southern end of the Caspian Sea, but not in Persia generally, 
nor in central Asia, nor the lower Indus Valley ; but it inhabits 
the Elburz range of northern Persk, and thence ranges eastward 
throughout southern Siberia, Mongolia, northern Manchuria, 
Sakhalin, and Yesso; and formerly, as is shown by fossil re- 
mains, the species ranged northward of the Arctic Circle. 
From Mongolia the tiger range extends southward through 
China and the Siamese and Malay Peninsula to Java, but not 
to Borneo. Westwardly it passes around the Bay of Bengal, 
and extends over all India except the barren northwest; but 
the tiger has never crossed to Ceylon, though quite able 
to pass along a train of connecting islands. This circum- 
stance, and its absence from Borneo, lend force to Blanford's 

123 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

theory that this animal is a comparatively recent immigrant 
from the north into southern India and the Malay islands. 
This distribution also shows that the tiger is a creature of the 
mountains and forests rather than of open plains, and is used 
to a cold climate ; in fact, it is far more worried by heat than is 
its African brother, and loves to wallow in cool, shallow water. 




Copyright, N. Y. Zoological Society. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



A Rajah of the Jungles. 



The habits of the tiger — its nocturnal hunting, its prey, its 
family life, its behavior when attacked and relation to mankind 
Haunts — are practically those of the lion. Both cats are 

and Habits, accustomed to their own narrow, almost undisputed 
way, are moved to exertion mainly by hunger and jealousy, 
are suspicious of everything strange and inclined to fear what- 
ever they do not understand, are capable of terrific force, yet 
are dull save in the line of their predatory instincts, and change 

124 



THE TIGER IN BOOKS 

from timidity to reckless bravado with season, mood, and in- 
dividual temperament. The tigers of India and the Malayan 
countries, at least, have furnished material for a large library 
of books written by men who have studied their subject with 
close observation along the ridge of a rifle barrel, as well as by 
more scientific persons. Sir Joseph Fayrer devoted a whole 
volume 154 to this animal ; the general writers, Jerdon, Sterndale, 
Blanford, Lydekker, and other Asiatic specialists, give it much 
space in their faunal zoologies ; and it is the star subject in those 
many admirable books by Anglo-Indian sportsmen which form 
so valuable a part of the literature of natural history. Fore- 
most among these men are Cumming, Campbell, Bevan, 
Shakspear, Baker, Inglis, Pollok, Rice, Leveson, Brown, 
Kinloch, Sanderson, Macintyre, Barras, Forsyth, and Whitney, 
all of whom must be read if one is to become really ac- 
quainted with the large animals of the East. This mass of 
material compasses a circle of information as to tigers equaled 
in the case of few other animals; and it would be hard to find 
in it a statement by one man that the tiger "never is" or "never 
does" thus and so, which is not met by a positive statement 
by another equally credible witness that he has seen the animal 
doing that very thing. We must conclude, then, as we did with 
regard to the lion, that it is unsafe to predict anything precisely 
as to its behavior ; and that tigers differ in characteristics and 
qualities, quickly adapting their tactics to circumstances. 

The relation between the people of the Orient and the tiger 
is very different from that between the Africans and their 
lions. -In the first place, the former is a far more formidable 
and dangerous animal, take him "by and large," than the lion,— 
more quick, powerful, sly, subtle, and cunning. It is the opinion 
of the most experienced hunters that no man, however well 
trained and modernly armed, is a match for a tiger on foot. 
Certain bold hill tribes used, it is true, to surround a trouble- 
some tiger with strong nets, and then spear him to death through 

I2 5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

their meshes; but no such feats of single-handed conquering 
as abound in the history of the lion can be undertaken here. 
The nearest to it that is known to me is Basil Hall's 168 descrip- 
tion of an arena show at an Indian Rajah's court, in which a 
Hindoo armed only with a Goorkha's knife met a tiger, cleverly 
avoided its spring, hamstrung it as it passed, and then de- 
livered a second stroke quickly enough to cut through the 
animal's spinal cord and kill it. The Goorkhas do sometimes 
kill wild tigers with their celebrated knives, — or used to ; but 
they are hardy fellows of the mountains. Most of the Hindoos 
and Malays meekly accept the tiger as an evil to be endured, 
and in this mood have lifted it, with superstitious terror and 
reverence, into a sort of malignant deity, which must and may 
be pacified. "You can be shown to-day," remarks J. L. 
Supersti- Kipling, "forest shrines and saintly tombs where 
tions. tfte t jg er comes nightly to keep pious guard, and you 

may hear in any Hindoo village of jogis to whom the cruel 
beasts are as lapdogs." One of the difficulties which British 
officers have encountered in certain parts of India, in their 
attempts to kill off the cattle-lifting or man-eating tigers of some 
dangerously infested neighborhood, or to have sport with them, 
is the opposition of the people to their destruction. A comical 
illustration of this is given in the century-old, but ever interest- 
ing, book of the "Old Forest Ranger" (Colonel R. Baigrie), 
the scene of the incident being not far from Bombay : — 

"While sitting at breakfast we were alarmed by hearing cries of dis- 
tress proceeding from the jagheerdar's hut, and on running out to ascertain 
the cause, we found old Kamah in a furious state of excitement, his left 
hand firmly fixed in the woolly pate of the hopeful scion of the house, and 
belaboring him stoutly with a stout bamboo. We inquired what crime 
young Moideen had been guilty of to bring upon him such a storm of pa- 
rental indignation, and learned to our astonishment that it was all owing 
to his having killed a tiger ! One of his father's tame buffaloes having been 
killed by a tiger on the previous day, the young savage had watched for him 
during the night, and shot him from a tree when he returned to feed upon 

126 



THE LEOPARD 

the carcass. This most people would have considered a very gallant and 
meritorious exploit on the part of a lad of fifteen, but the old forester was 
of a different opinion. 

'"It was all very well,' he said, 'for us who lived in the open country 
to wage war with tigers, but with him, who lived on sociable terms with 
them, in the jungle, the case was different. I have no quarrel with tigers ! 
I never injured one of them, they never injured me; and while there was 
peace between us, I went among them without fear of danger. But now 
that this voung rascal has picked a quarrel, and commenced hostilities, 
there is no saying where the thing will end!'" 

Perhaps, after all, the most typical of all the Felidae, as 
it is the most widely distributed, is the beautiful leopard or 
panther — an " all-round cat." Anciently it was to be 

Leopard. 

found all over Africa and Arabia, eastward to Japan, 
and southward as far as Ceylon, Java, and Borneo ; but, unless 
we regard the ounce as a mere variety, the species does not 
range north of the Sahara, Turkestan, or the Himalayan foot- 
hills except in northern China. Bones indistinguishable from 
those of the modern leopard are exhumed, however, from the 
caves and superficial deposits of southern Europe, even as far 
west as England. In such a vast range highly diverse climates 
and conditions must be met, and we should expect to find as 
we do, much variety within the species. 

In size, the differences are so great, that "while in the smallest examples 
the total length of the head, body, and tail does not exceed five feet, in the 
largest it reaches to as much as eight feet." The biggest known have come 
from eastern Siberia. The tail is usually about as long as the body, but 
varies greatly in relative length. The ground color in general is yellowish - 
fawn, deepening in some examples to red or to a rich nut-brown, and light- 
ening into pure white on the throat and abdomen, profusely spotted. The 
spots take the form of rosettes or incomplete rings of black, inclosing an 
area without any central spot, which may or may not be darker than the 
ground tint; on the flanks, lower legs, and tail, the spots are smaller and 
mainly solid, and toward the end of the tail they become rings. Local 
influences vary this typical pattern. Thus the skins of African leopards 
may always be distinguished from Asiatic skins by their smaller and more 

127 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

solid spots; further, the leopards from peninsular India are less richly 
colored than are those inhabiting the damp forests about the Bay of Bengal. 
Albinos are almost unknown, but black leopards are common in the tropi- 
cal East, and one or two may be born in a litter otherwise normal. These 
are reputed to be extremely savage — a reputation justified by their be- 
havior in menageries; and this disposition may be due to a sense that they 
are more conspicuous than they should be. No black leopards have been 
found in Africa, but a dark local race frequents certain hills near the Cape. 

The leopard is a far lighter, more active and agile animal 
than either the lion or the tiger, and is sly and cautious withal, 
so that it is doubtless responsible for a large part 
of the wickedness laid at the doors of its bigger 
brethren. Hundreds of wild adventures with leopards may be 
read in the books of the sportsmen already referred to; and 
Sanderson has full support for his assertion that "although its 
powers of offense are inferior to those of the tiger, it is in some 
respects a more dangerous animal as it is roused by less prov- 
ocation, and is more courageous in attacking those who disturb 
its repose. The favorite haunts of leopards are rocky, brushy 
hills with holes suitable for a den, where they may watch the 
surrounding country, and at sunset descend with astonishing 
celerity and stealth to cut off any straggling animal returning 
to the village at nightfall. They prey boldly on the small 
Hindoo cattle and ponies, but more habitually on the sheep, 
goats, and dogs, and now and then (but rarely) turn man-eaters. 
Forsyth sketches at length a famous leopard in northern India 
which killed nearly one hundred persons before he was got 
rid of, and similar African cases are on record. 

The leopard cannot overcome, ordinarily, animals as large 
as the lion and tiger slay, but everything of lesser size is accept- 
able, down to robbing birds' nests and clawing grubs out of 
rotten wood. Carrion is eaten, and this makes even a scratch 
from a leopard's teeth or claws very dangerous. Birds, both in 
trees and on the ground, are struck down, and peafowl, crows, 

128 



IRREGULARITY OF HABITS 

and the like break into noisy clamor the instant the enemy is 
caught sight of ; there is nothing monkeys justly hate and fear 
so much, and swear at so volubly. Of the smaller animals 
the forest pigs probably contribute most to " spot's" bill of 
fare. The old boars alone feel safe, for even a hungry tiger 
hesitates to tackle them ; and in one case of such an attempt, 
witnessed by Gen. Douglas Hamilton, he came off rather the 
worse. Usually the leopard's " harsh, measured, coughing" roar 
is heard in the early evening, when it sets out upon its foray after 
lying asleep at home all day ; but such habits are by no means 
the same everywhere, nor invariable in any individual. 




Copyright, X. V. Zoological Society. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



An Indian Leopard. 



The notorious fondness of the leopard for dogs is one of its 
specialties, and, like many other points in its character, reminds 
one of the jaguar, which, in fact, is probably descended from the 
same stock. It is not uncommon in India for dogs to be carried 
off from public places, sometimes where the presence of a 
beast of prey is unsuspected. 

So closely allied to the leopard that one suspects it must be 

substantially the same animal, which has adapted itself to life 

in a very cold country, is the snow leopard, or "ounce," 

long known from the beautiful skins brought to market 

k i ?g 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Ounce. 



from the high interior of central Asia. It inhabits the 
plateaus and mountains of Tibet and Mongolia, keeping 
near the snow, whose retreat it follows in summer to 
the height of eighteen thousand feet or more in pur- 
suit of the game, so that it is not surprising to find it clothed 
in a long, dense, woolly coat very light gray in color above and 
pure white on the under parts. 



The markings are leopardlike blackish rosettes, most of them filled 
with a dusky tint and becoming black circles on the long heavy tail. The 




The Snow Leopard. 



result is a pelt of peculiar beauty and market value. The legs are short, 
and the fore ones have the massive strength needed by such a climber and 
hunter of powerful game. The ounce is rarely seen, though numerous, at 
least in the northwestern Himalaya, for it goes abroad mainly at night, and 
is timid. It preys upon wild sheep and goats, musk deer and mountain 
marmots ; and in winter seizes the smaller domestic animals of the villagers, 
but never attacks man. The only example ever seen alive in Europe lived 
for a few months in 1894 in the London "Zoo," and was perfectly gentle, 
"suffering itself to be led or pulled about by the keeper, and taking its 
rations of boiled mutton out of his hand without a sign of hostility." 

Captain Baldwin, in his book on the large game of Bengal, has a most 

130 



MALAYAN LEOPARD CATS 

interesting chapter on the ounce, and relates how a fine old snow leopard, 
believed to be the mother of a cub which he captured but did not succeed 
in saving, was killed by one of the party of Tibetans in a curious and unex- 
pected way. It was seen at a little distance, basking on a ledge of rock 
at the mouth of its den, and apparently asleep, when the Tibetan, looking 
over upon it from above, dropped a large stone with such precision that it 
struck the sleeping animal in the middle of the back and broke its spine. 140 

Still farther from the true leopard in markings, though 
approaching it in size, is the clouded leopard, or "tree tiger" 
of the Malays, found from Bhutan down through Assam, 
Burma, and the Malay Peninsula to Borneo and Formosa. It 
is nowhere numerous, and passes the whole of its cloU( jed 
time in trees, sleeping there by hanging across a thick Leopard, 
crotch, and catching birds, monkeys, and other small animals 
for food. It lingers about villages and raids the native poultry, 
but otherwise is regarded as harmless, despite the fact that its 
canines are longer and sharper than those of any other cat. 
Captive specimens are usually gentle and playful, twisting and 
turning somersaults about their cages like huge squirrels. 
Its beautiful buffy coat is thickly spotted and streaked with 
black, often running into long, irregular, winding patches. 
Almost exact miniatures of it are the marbled cat of the same 
region and the Tibetan cat ; and here, too, should be mentioned 
the golden cat, the fishing cat, and the leopard cat. 

The first-named is probably the handsomest cat in existence — a pale, 
golden chestnut in color, becoming bay along the back; the throat and 
under parts are white, while the face is strikingly ornamented Golden 
with stripes of black, white, and orange. It is known in all Cat - 
the eastern Himalaya, and thence down the mountain ranges of the Malay 
Peninsula; and it is believed that from it has been derived that most ex- 
traordinary of domestic cats, — the Siamese, formerly reserved for royal 
laps and cushions alone, and still uncommon and precious. It is uniformly 
tawny in color, with dark muzzle, under parts and limbs, and has short 
legs and blue eyes. The flat-headed cat (Felis planiceps) is another 
Malayan species of uniform coloration, which may have had a share in 
the ancestry of these favored pets. 

131 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The fishing or viverrine cat is a long-bodied, short-limbed, 
rather large species, striped and spotted in lines somewhat 
like a civet, which occurs wherever there are watery swamps 
from Nepal to China, and in Ceylon, but not in the Malayan 
Fishing islands. It is said to feed on fish, and on the 
snails and fresh- water mussels, but no one knows 
just how the fish are obtained. It also catches birds, lizards, 
and snakes, and comes out of its jungle now and then to terrorize 
the neighborhood by carrying off not only sheep, calves, and dogs, 
but pickaninnies that have been left unguarded — even break- 
ing into huts to do so. Everybody credits it with willingness 
and ability to whip its weight (and more) in any sort of wild- 
cats you can bring. It will attack a man on sight if he is in its 
road to liberty, or if it happens to feel like it ; and one which 
Blyth tried to keep broke through a partition the very first 
night and killed a leopard double its size in the next room. 
One hesitates to believe that a cat which makes its part of 
the jungle as interesting for its enemies as that one takes 
any large part of its daily bread in the form of fishes and 
snails. 

The leopard cat, or Bengal cat, is a much smaller species, 
which avoids the swamps and keeps to the forested hills, and 

Bengal * s to ^ e met w i tn as ^ ar east as tne Philippines. It 
Cat - is only about two feet long, with another foot o^ 

tail length ; and is so precisely like a little leopard in appearance 
that it is frequently mistaken for a young one. It, also, is 
noted for boldness and savagery, and though often trapped 
can rarely be brought, even as a kitten, into friendly relations 
with its keeper. Finally, India and Ceylon have the little 
"rusty" cat, — smallest of its tribe, — which is usually yellowish 
red but often gray, with stripes on the face and black spots 
elsewhere, except on the tail. It lurks mainly in 
tall grass and thickets, and is one of the quickest 
creatures on earth. Dr. Jerdon m relates an incident illus- 

132 



LVS TIXC TI VE RAPA CITY 

trating its instinctive recognition of prey and intuitive knowl- 
edge of what to do — and lose no time about it. 

"I had a kitten brought to me very young . . . and it became quite tame 
and was the admiration of all who saw it. Its activity was quite marvelous 
and it was very playful and elegant in its motions. When it was about 
eight months old I introduced it into a room where there was a small fawn 
of the gazelle, and the little creature flew at it the moment it saw it, seized it 
by the nape, and was with difficulty taken off. ... It would occasionally 
find its way to the rafters of bungalows and hunt for squirrels. Sir W. 
Elliot notices that he has seen several undoubted hybrids between this 
and the domestic cat, and I have also observed the same." 

Leaving Asia for the present, let us turn to Africa and speak 
first of the big serval, which is met with throughout that 
continent, yet whose habits are little known. Its body may 
measure thirty-eight inches, and the tail add sixteen inches 
more; and it stands on long legs and wears a black-spotted 
coat of no particular color or value. Nevertheless, as the fur 
is long and soft it is a good deal used by furriers, and wholly 
black skins frequently come to market, as is the case with most 
cats. Africa has some other cats of her own of which we 
know little, and a few which she shares with Asia or Europe, 
and these last form a connected group of historical interest. 

Puss and her Ancestors 

If you were to go into that magnificent storehouse of Egyp- 
tian antiquities at Boulak, near Cairo, you would see rows of 
skillfully wrapped mummies of cats and of the richly adorned 
- in which many of them had been laid to rest with pious 
care. One may imagine the pain and dismay with which any 
of their former mistresses would view them here, veneration 
set up as "objects of interest" for idle and irreverent for Cats - 
eyes, for these were beloved companions or revered pensioners 
of the days of the early Pharaohs. Read Miss Agnes Rep- 
plier's 138 account of them : — 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




"However mysterious and informal may have been her birth, Pussy's 
first appearance in veracious history is a splendid one. More than three 
thousand years ago she dwelt serenely by the Nile, and the great nation 

of antiquity paid her respectful 
homage. Sleek and beautiful, she 
drowsed in the shadow of mighty 
temples, or sat blinking and wash- 
ing her face with contemptuous 
disregard alike of priest and peo- 
ple. There is no mention of her 
in Holy Writ; but when Moses 
led the Children of Israel into the 
desert, she watched him go — 

'With somber sea-green gaze in- 
scrutable.' 

Deserts, indeed, offered scant 
allurement to her. No wander- 
ing people have ever enjoyed her 
sweet companionship. The Arabs 
loved and valued her; but could 
do no more than carry her across 
the trackless sands for the enrich- 
ment of softer homes than their 
black tents could offer. 

'And the bubbling camels beside 
the load 

Sprawled for a furlong adown the 
road; 

And the Persian pussy cats, brought 
for sale, 

Spat at the dogs from the camel- 
bale.' 

" Egypt, as the granary of the 
ancient world, had especial need 
for Pussy's services, and the Egyp- 
tian cat was a mighty hunter, 
prey, — but of wildfowl caught in 
where she could swim with ease, 
paired by her usefulness. She was 



A Cat Mummy and its Case. 

" I was a little Egyptian cat, 

Meouw, Meouw, Meouw I 
I lived in King Pharaoh's palace, I did. 
The rats and the mice, I would chase with delight ; 
I often caught birds, which I know wasn't right; 
And, instead of a fence, I would sit up all night 
And meouw on the top of the Pyramid. 

" But one day I was greedy and ate seven mice, 
Meouw, Meouw, Meouw / 
So I had a bad fit, and I died, I did! 
Then they hurried and made me this beautiful 

case, 
It covers me all, just excepting my face, 
And they put me away in a nice quiet place, 
On a shelf right inside of the Pyramid. 

" And there have I been for these thousands of 
years, 

Meouw, Meouw, Meouw ! 
And I hoped to lie hidden forever, I did. 
But they hunted me out and they brought me 

away, — 
Oh, isn't it horrid that I have to stay 
In a dusty museum here, day after day, 
When I want to go back to my Pyramid ! 
Meouw, Meouw, Meouw I " 

not only of rats and mice, — ancestral 
reedy marshes, and in shallow waters 
Her sacred character was in no wise im 

134 



EGYPT S FAVORED CATS 

the favorite of Pasht, who, in smiling mood, had given her to the world ; 
and the deep veneration in which she was held provoked biting jests from 
travelers, who then, as now, lacked sympathy for strange customs and 
strange gods. . . . 

"The exact era of Pussy's domestication in Egypt is lost in the dawn of 
history. It was so very long ago that our minds grow dizzy contemplating 
the vast stretch of centuries. A tablet in the Berlin Museum, which has 
on it a representation of a cat, dates from 1600 B.C. ; and another, two hun- 
dred years older, bears an inscription containing the word mau, or 'cat.' 
The temples of Bubastis, of Beni Hasan, and of Heliopolis were the most 
sacred haunts of this most sacred animal. There, petted, pampered, 
wrapped in silken ease, and, above all, treated with that delicate reverence 
she is so quick to understand and appreciate, she lived her allotted lives; 
and there, when all nine were well spent, her little corpse was lovingly em- 
balmed, and buried in a gilded mummy case with dignified and appropriate 
ceremonial. . . . 

"The great burying grounds of favored Egyptian cats were the thrice- 
blessed fields of Speos Artemidos near the tombs of Beni Hasan, where 
thousands of little mummies reposed for centuries. It was reserved 
for our rude age to desecrate their graves, to flmg their ashes to 
the four winds of heaven, or, with base utilitarianism, to sell the 
poor little swathed and withered bodies — once so beautiful and gently 
tended — for any trifling sum they would bring from ribald tourists who 
infest the land. Many were used even as fertilizers of the ancient soil — 
a more honorable fate, and one which consigned them gently to oblivion." 

Now who or what was this little Egyptian cat, so respected 
and loved and made immortal? History does not record its 
paternity, nor legend throw light upon its origin Egyptian 
and kindred. But the mummy has revealed the Wlldcat - 
secret. When, moved by curious interest, you ascend the Nile 
to Beni Hasan, and bend your steps to the pit tombs of the 
sacred cats behind the ruins of the great temple of Bubastis, 
you may perchance catch sight of a living and elegant wildcat 
watching you from some rocky knoll, or, oblivious of your 
noiseless approach, furtively creeping toward a trochilus by 
the riverside or stiffening its muscles for a leap upon some 
toothsome hare or jerboa. In that lithe and eager beast, 

135 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

which seems so familiar, although you have never seen it before, 
stands the parent of our " fireside sphinx." It is the Egyptian, 
or Caffre, or Libyan, or gloved cat — for by so many names 
does Felts libyca go into our books and museums. 

"The caffre cat," as described by Lydekker, "is about the size of a 
large domestic cat, and is generally of a yellowish color (becoming more 
or less gray in some specimens), darker on the back, and paler on the under 
parts. The body is marked with faint pale stripes, which assume, how- 
ever, on the limbs, the form of distinct dark horizontal bands ; and the tail, 
which is relatively long, is also more or less distinctly ringed towards its 
tip, which is completely black. The sides of the face are marked by two 
horizontal streaks. Very generally the soles of the hind feet are black." 

Its habits are simple. It hunts largely by night, yet is 
often seen abroad by day, catching the various birds and small 
mammals of the desert. Anderson, whose magnificent work 
on Egyptian zoology contains a portrait from which our plate 
has been drawn, informs us that it " inhabits dry situations in 
rocks or wooded districts . . . and lives in deep holes which 
extend underground for a considerable distance" — holes 
dug by other animals. The cat is known all over the more 
open parts of Africa, and is so variable that formerly several 
specific names were given to its different phases. Everywhere 
it seems to cross freely with domestic cats; and Anderson was 
told by Stanley Flower that he had seen house cats near Suez 
which could scarcely be told from Felts libyca. 

That this cat was domesticated by the people of ancient Egypt is evi- 
dent not only by the identity with it of the mummy skeletons, but is demon- 
strated by an old Egyptian wall painting preserved in the British Museum, 
representing a family hunting expedition into the reed beds along the Nile 
where waterfowl abounded. A prominent figure is a cat, unmistakably 
the libyca, whose business evidently is to retrieve if not to catch the birds 
slain by arrows or throwing-sticks. She has just caught one in her mouth, 
while she holds another with her forepaws and a third between her hind- 
paws ! Truly, a useful cat. 

136 



A SI A 7 'IC I VILD CA TS 

So much for the tamed cats of Egypt ; but what have they to 
do with our own Puss? Everything, for it now seems certain 
that she has come down to us from these same "little Egyptian 
cats," and even owes to them her pet name. A century ago it 
was generally believed that all the house cats of the world were 
derived from Europe, and came from tamed wildcats — the 
common wildcat (Felis cat us), still numerous in the forested 
central parts of that continent, though nearly extinct in Great 
Britain. It is the only one of the smaller cats to have the 
honor of a descriptive book 132 all to itself, while Eastern 
its career in Great Britain, where it has been the Wild cats. 
subject of much curious hunting history, furnishes entertaining 
chapters to Bell, 93 Harting, 109 and other British writers, not to 
speak of continental authorities. So we know this animal 
better, perhaps, than almost any other of its kind. 

Eastward of the Caspian Sea its place is taken by Pallas's 
cat, or the "manul," which is rather smaller, "is pale whitish 
gray, with some narrow dark markings on the chest, loins, and 
limbs, the tail being short and ringed . . . and differs from 
all other Old World members of its genus by the great length 
and softness of its fur." The Russian naturalist Pallas sug- 
gested that this cat was the original of the long-haired Persian 
or Angora breed, and this is probably so, since, "with the 
exception of the shortness of the tail and its dark rings, all the 
characters of this species are just those which might be expected 
in the ancestor of the Persian breed"; and Lydekker thinks 
that the points mentioned may have been eliminated by careful 
selection or crossing. 

In the same wild, dry uplands of central Asia lives also the 
steppe cat, especially numerous in Bokhara, which is yellowish 
and thickly speckled with small, irregular brown spots that 
arrange themselves into lines or even streaks on the fore shoulders 
and the thighs. A near ally to it is the desert cat, smaller, 
more whitey brown, and prevalent on the arid plains of north- 

137 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

western India. Its habitat is shared by the Indian wildcat, 
which resembles the European one but is smaller and more 
reddish; and by the more familiar, short-tailed jungle cat, 
or " chaus," which is sand color, more or less dark and unspotted, 
all markings being very obscure and variable and most evident 
in the young. This chaus ranges all over India and Ceylon, 
and thence westward through Persia and Asia Minor to the 
Delta of the Nile, where, as elsewhere, it is partial to low, marshy 
ground, sugar-cane fields, and similar thick cover where it 
preys largely on game birds. 

Special attention has been paid to this group of Oriental 
wildcats, because they and some others there less noticeable 
seem very closely akin; and also because to them 
we must look for the parentage of the Indian domes- 
tic breeds. Most if not all of these wildcats will interbreed 
and will cross with domesticated breeds, producing fertile 
offspring. This reproductive faculty extends to both the Euro- 
pean and Egyptian wildcats, which Hamilton 132 long ago 
suggested were derived from a common ancestor. Professor 
G. Martorelli, of Milan, took up the subject more lately, and 
having studied not only the present structure and the mummy 
skeletons, but also fossil remains, came to the conclusion that 
all of the foregoing species are offshoots of a stock now nearly 
represented by the Egyptian cat. Dr. Lydekker has sum- 
marized his results thus : — 

"If the views of Professor Martorelli be found substantially correct, 
the following will be the lines of evolution : Firstly, we have the ancestral 
types of the Egyptian cat (F. libyca), inhabiting northeastern Africa and a 
considerable part of Europe during the Pleistocene, and perhaps a part of 
the Pliocene, period. From this original species originated in the Eastern 
side of the world the Mediterranean cat (F. mediterranea) and the wild- 
cat (F. catus). When man became dominant, he produced the European 
domesticated breed, either from the typical Egyptian cat or from its va- 
riety, the Mediterranean cat, and this original domestic breed soon became 
crossed with its immediate cousin, the wildcat. On the other hand, in 

138 



PEDIGREE OF THE HOUSE CAT 

the East, the original Egyptian cat gave rise to the jungle cat (F. chaus), the 
steppe cat (F. caudata), and presumably, therefore, that near ally of the 
latter, the Indian desert cat (F. omata). From the latter are derived the 
spotted Indian domesticated cats, while the fulvous domesticated breed of 
the same country has been produced by a cross with the jungle cat. Both 
these are now largely crossed with their somewhat remote cousin, the 
striped domesticated cat of Europe. The Persian cat . . . may probably 
be derived from Pallas's cat, which has no sort of connection with the 
Egyptian cat; and the cross between the Persian and European 'tabby,' 
now so common, is consequently a very mixed breed indeed." 

This brings us naturally to the pedigree of our household 
mousers. The old, thoughtless notion as has been said, was 
that they were simply tamed (European) wildcats. People 
read in their translations of the classics of the "cats" of ancient 
Greece, and said that these had been domesticated before 
written history began, and had become changed during the long 
centuries since they began to catch mice in the halls of My- 
kaenae or between decks on the ships of Tarshish. 

But careful students began to foresee that this simple ex- 
planation would not suffice. Faith in it was disturbed in the 
first place by the criticism 184 that the Greek word _, , 

r J Pedigree 

aihiros had been improperly translated as "cat." of Domes- 

r r tic Cat. 

Really it meant the white-breasted marten {Maries 
joina) which the early Greeks kept as a ratter, much as we now 
employ its relative, the ferret ; and they did not have any true 
cat at all. Next, the anatomists found that there were essential 
and constant differences as to certain bones and in points of 
color between the wildcats and the house cats of Europe, 
which could not be reconciled. Then archaeologists began to 
collect mummied cats in Egypt, whose bones, the anatomists 
told them, precisely agreed with those of the Egyptian wild- 
cat (Felis libyca) ; and pictured evidence appeared that such 
cats were domesticated anciently along the Nile. At that time 
all Europe was a savage wilderness, except, perhaps, some 
beginnings of civilization in Greece and southern Italy. Pres- 

139 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

ently fossil remains turned up in England and in Belgium, 
which bore closer resemblance to the Egyptian than to the 
European wildcats, and examination revealed that the living, 
wildcats of Sardinia and Tuscan Italy were not of the European 
type, but were (and are) a Mediterranean variety of the Egyp- 
tian cat. 

Lastly, research in another direction, namely, of the relics 
from the graves of the early inhabitants of northern Italy, 300 
or 400 years before Christ, and of the earliest remains of 
Roman colonization in Britain, proved that those peoples 
had domestic cats. Now both these places traded with the 
Phoenicians, who were the carriers of Egyptian trade as well as 
of their own; and it is fair to infer that they introduced cats 
from the Levant. Thus all the evidence points to the Egyp- 
tian cat as at any rate the principal source of the house cat of 
Europe, and hence of America and the western world generally. 
Our very word "Puss" is only a domestication, so to speak, of 
the name of the Egyptian moon goddess Pasht. 

But this is not the end of the matter. In all parts of the 
world one or another of the smaller wildcats of the country 
have been kept as pets in native houses; and wherever the 
people have been far enough advanced to raise and store grain, 
they have cultivated a cat or some other animal to free their gran- 
aries from thieving mice. It was for this purpose, no doubt, 
that the cats of Egypt were first tamed ; and then, to make the 
people prudently keep them and care for them, the priests got 
up a religious story, and invented a beneficient and cheerful 
cat goddess, who, naturally, was said to walk abroad mostly 
by moonlight. It is believed that the early agriculturists of 
Europe subjugated their wildcat to the same end. If so, when 
the Egyptian cats reached Europe they would certainly soon 
meet and interbreed with the native stock, since, if Martorelli 
is right, the two were only distant cousins ; and to such crossing 
is probably due the prevalence of banded or " tabby" cats 

140 



NORTH AMERICAN WILDCATS 

there; in fact, until Eastern breeds began to be imported, 
comparatively recently, there was no other style. On the other 
hand, brindled cats were unknown in eastern Asia, whose 
spotted or foxy domestic cats were derived, as we have seen, from 
other and local sources ; yet are so closely akin that they readily 
produce fertile offspring when crossed with western breeds. 



Lynxes, Bobcats, and Cheetas 

All the cats thus far have had long tails and rounded ears; 
but toward the end of the list the ears grew sharper and a little 
tufted, and the tails much abbreviated, especially noticeable 
in the jungle cats. This tendency leads toward a group of 
short-tailed, tufted-eared cats, the lynxes, or ''bobcats," of 
special interest to us, because among them are our North 
American wildcats. "There are a number of species," said 
Coues, "inhabiting Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. 
They are of mod- 
erate size among 
the Felidae, but con- 
siderably larger 
than any house cat, 
with a short body, 
a very short tail, 
large and long 
limbs, usually 
bearded cheeks and 
tufted ears, and 
spotted, marbled, or 
clouded coloration. 
Some have been 
known from time 
immemorial, and famed for their supposed sharp-sightedness, 
which probably is no greater than that of any other cats." 

141 




Copyright. X. V. Zooloirical Society. 

The Canada Lynx. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

These characteristics, and their lack of the usual upper pre- 
molar, have led many zoologists to put them into a separate 
genus (Lynx). They are northern animals, but one species 
ranges throughout Africa. 

The typical and original lynx is that of the far North, — 
Scandinavia, northern Russia, Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, 
— and known to us as the Canada lynx, "catamount," or 
"lucivee"; the last is a shortening of the French loup cer- 
Canada vier, or "deer wolf" — a term of obscure meaning 
Lynx. perhaps arising from some weird superstition of the 

Middle Ages. In the arctic borders it reaches a great size, 
old males there, it has been said, being sometimes fifty inches 
long, but southerly specimens rarely exceed forty inches, such 
standing about eighteen inches high, with a tail adding about 
five inches. The males differ widely in the length of the 
peculiar neck ruff, and of the black pencils on the ears. In 
color they are grizzled, with a varying tinge of reddish or brown- 
ish showing through from the base of the hairs; this tinge is 
stronger in summer than in winter, and some specimens are 
indistinctly spotted, especially when young. Those of high and 
dry Tibet are noticeably pale, while those of damp and cloudy 
Newfoundland show an excess of dark color, and have even 
been regarded as an isolated species. A kind of lynx inhabiting 
the northern shores and islands of the Mediterranean is redder 
and more spotted than those of the North (as happens in America 
with southern varieties) and is deemed a separate species called 
the pardine lynx. 

The lynx is undoubtedly the most dangerous and destructive beast of 
prey left in Europe. One who reads the admirable biographies of Tschudi 
or Brehm sees that he lives by stratagem. He has not a particularly fine 
sense of smell, nor is his pace rapid. It is his patience, and the skill with 
which he creeps noiselessly up to his victim, that brings him a reward. 
"More patient than the fox, he is less cunning; less hardy than the wolf, 
he leaps better and can resist famine longer. He is not so strong as the 
bear, but keeps a better lookout, and has sharper sight. . . . Every animal 

142 



CANADA LYNX 




he can reach with one of his bounds is lost and devoured; if he misses he 
allows the animal to escape, and returns to crouch in his post of observa- 
tion, without showing his disappointment. He is not voracious, but he 
loves warm blood, and this habit makes him imprudent. ... If he comes 
upon a flock of goats or sheep, he ap- 
proaches, dragging his belly along the ground 
like a snake, then raises himself with a 
bound, falls on the back of his victim, breaks 
its neck, or cuts its carotids with his teeth, 
and kills it instantly." In view of these 
traits, which are manifested by American 
examples whenever they are in the neigh- 
borhood of settlements, it is not surprising 
that their extirpation is one of the first duties 
of pioneers. 

Our Canada lynx is now rarely 
seen south of Lake Superior except 
in eastern Quebec and the adjoining 
forests of Maine and New Brunswick; 
but their skins, obtained easily by 
trapping in winter, form one of the 
most profitable items in the season's 
catch of furs by the Indians of Que- 
bec and the Hudson Bay country. 

On the Pacific side the animal 
comes well south in the high moun- 
tains. Nowhere is it numerous, and 
it varies in abundance from year to 
year according to the local plenty or 
scarcity of food — especially of hares. 
"To the lone hunter who camps 
in the dark and gloomy forests it 

seems a very dangerous animal, but in reality it is not so." 
Nevertheless long-continued hunger will give them extreme 
boldness; and, like their southern cousins, they will at such 
times recklessly pounce even upon the porcupine, get their 

143 




Bobcat and Canada Lynx. 

Illustrating varietal difference. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

paws and face full of quills, and finally die of them as the 
barbs work their way into the flesh, inflaming the mouth and 
throat until feeding is impossible, and perhaps reaching the 
eyes and so producing blindness and starvation. 

"The lynx," say the authors of "American Animals," "appears to have 
its summer home in tangled thickets and snarls of young growth, where 
the interlocking branches of fallen trees afford protection. Here the ill- 
natured kittens are raised and taught to hunt, so that when the bitter struggle 
of winter is forced upon them they may, if possible, hold their own and pro- 
long their lives at the expense of others in order that their race may live 
and hold on to life grimly through long, cold nights in the dark northern 
forests, believing somehow that at last spring will be in the woods again, 
bringing flight birds from the South, and awakening the small creatures 
that sleep all winter down deep in frozen earth where the most desperate 
lynx can never reach them. Until then the lynxes must hunt as best they 
can, tireless and in splendid health and quite unconscious of the cold, but 
oh, so hungry ! 

"One of the most astonishing facts in nature is the length of time that 
most flesh-eating animals can go without food, on long hunts through deep 
snow, night after night, breathing frozen air that drives a man hungry soon 
after the heartiest meal, yet still holding their strength ready for a desperate 
struggle when at last the long pursuit draws to a successful end." 

This may be true of New England, but in Canada- food (big hares) is 
in winter most abundant and easily obtained. 

More familiar is that smaller, more spotted, less splay-footed 

but equally unregenerate southern lynx, — the bobcat. It 

differs, however, from the Canada lynx in so small 

Bobcat. ' ' ■ . .-,... 

particulars as to make its specific distinction as 
Felis ruja more a matter of convenience than of necessity. 
As it has little use for snowshoes, its feet are not big and furry ; 
the ears make less show of tassels than in the other species ; the 
coat is not so long and shaggy, and the fur is more decidedly 
tinted (especially with yellow and red), and is spotted. As to 
size, average specimens are much the same (about thirty-five 
inches long) when taken on the meeting ground along the 
Canada border. As the lucivees increase in bulk toward the 

144 



B OB CA T CHAR A C TERIS TICS 

north, — apparently the proper habitat of the group, — so 
the bobcats grow smaller toward the southern limits of their 
range, those of the deserts on the border of Mexico, for example, 
being not more than two thirds the bigness of Alaskan ones. 
Similarly these wildcats vary in warmth of color and degree of 
spottedness according to region, in conformity with the law of 
climatic effect observable generally, that southern animals 
are brighter and more plentifully marked than northern ones of 
the same kind ; and that those of a moist region are more highly 
colored than those of an arid country. It is not surprising, then, 
to find that the early naturalists, getting isolated specimens 
from remotely separated localities, and not seeing the inter- 
grading forms living between, should have regarded them as 
separate species ; and ten or a dozen varieties of the bobcat are 
still named by the systemists, whose eyes are much more keen 
for distinctions than for resemblances. 

These bobcats yet linger all over the country wherever 
mountains and woodlands, swamps or deserts, give them a 
refuge, and their habits are much the same as those of wildcats 
elsewhere ; but they are steadily diminishing before the persecu- 
tion of farmers and ranchmen, of trappers who covet their 
pelts, and of sportsmen who enjoy outwitting their stratagems 
and witnessing the futile rage when at last, in the face of dogs 
and rifles, the furious little beast fights gamely to the end without 
a chance for life. The literature of sport and pioneering is 
filled with stories of wildcat hunting — none more interesting 
than those related by Audubon as he saw it in the South during 
the second third of the nineteenth century; but at present if one 
wants to enjoy that sort of thing he must go into the far West. 
Xo better guide can be found than Theodore Roosevelt, who 
has vividly pictured the incidents of such a chase, the method 
of which is much the same as that of puma hunting with 
dogs. 128 

One more foreign species requires mention, — the caracal, 
L H5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

a small, slender, active animal of the open country of eastern 
Africa and southwestern Asia; it is uniformly bright red- 
dish fawn in color, and has no ruff, but the long 

w 3.1*3.03.1 • 

ears are sharply penciled with black, and the rather 
long tail has a black tip. It climbs trees, of course, and its 
power of long leaping and activity are marvelous. It has 
been known to steal up to a covey of francolins (a kind of quail) 
and, at the instant of their rising, to spring into the air and knock 
down one with each paw. It is also said to hunt rabbits, etc., 
on the ground by chasing them in packs after the manner of 
wolves, and, like the jackal, to follow its betters for the "crumbs 
that fall from the master's table"; but why, on that account, 
should it be called "lion's provider," as the books allege? No 
soft influences have ever brought this fierce lynx into domestica- 
tion, but for centuries Eastern princes have subdued it (by the 
hands of their shikaris) into a hunting servant resembling a 
hawk in the nature of its work. 

The foremost cat trained for sport, however, is the cheeta, or 
hunting leopard, which closes the list of the family, 
and stands separated in the genus Cynaelurus in an 
intermediate position between the cats and the dogs. Its claws 
are only partly retractile into sheaths; there are many doglike 
features in its dentition and muscles, and its habits and dis- 
position are a curious mixture of feline and canine. The 
cheeta has a tall, wolflike figure, except in its small, round 
head, very slender limbs, and thin, "tucked-up" hindquarters; 
the neck and shoulders are surmounted by a mass of lengthened 
hair; and the tail is as long as the body, and grows thicker 
to the end. "General color, fulvescent cream or bright 
nankeen, more or less deep and dotted over with numerous 
round black spots," the face having a conspicuous black streak 
passing down from the corner of each eye, the pupils of which 
contract circularly. 

This animal inhabits all the more open parts of Africa, Arabia, 

146 




147 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and thence eastward to central India. In general manner of 
life it is a leopard, except that it is little fond of the forest, 
living mainly among rocky, barren hills, and attacking deer, 
antelopes, and the herdsman's flocks. Occasionally one 
settles down to a raiding life until killed as a public nuisance. 
It does not attack men. Blanford 19 declares that its speed in 
pursuit of quarry exceeds that of any other beast of prey, or 
even that of a greyhound. One has been seen to catch within 
four hundred yards a blackbuck that had a fair start. 

The cheeta is principally interesting, however, because for 
ages it has been trained in India to capture game for its masters, 
— it will not do to say it " hunts" for them, since it does nothing 
of the sort. This use of the large cats is of great antiquity. 

When .Elian wrote, in the third century of our era, the natives of India 

knew how to train the black -maned lion of that country for the chase, lead- 

x- .x r ing it in a slip. Marco Polo mentions that the Great Khan 
Antiquity of ° r 

Sport with of Tartary had not only leopards and lynxes trained to hunt, 

Cheeta. ^^ tjg ers> w hich were taken to the field on cages drawn in 

carts, and chased wild boars, wild cattle, deer, roebucks, and other beasts. 
In the Revue Britannique for October, 1885, will be found a very inter- 
esting article on hunting with the cheeta, written by Baron Dunoyer de Noir- 
ment, high authority on the history of the chase. He traces the progress of this 
sport from the earliest times. The cheeta is figured on Assyrian bas-reliefs in 
the act of seizing an antelope, and is represented on Egyptian monuments, 
1700 b.c, as led in a slip with a very ornamental collar. The Crusaders 
found this kind of sport much in vogue with the Mussulman princes of 
Syria; and a celebrated Arabic writer on hunting and hawking, Sidi 
Mohamed el Mangali, 148 enters in great detail upon the mode of taming 
and training caracals and the cheeta (deprivation of food and sleep 
being the chief means of subjection) as practiced in his day, about 1348 a.d. 
He declares that Persians knew the art best; mentions various local varie- 
ties, including a black one from South Arabia; and says that a leopard 
trained to hunt in concert with a falcon was of inestimable value. 

Tippoo Sahib, the last Sultan of Mysore, was, like most Eastern poten- 
tates, an enthusiastic sportsman, and kept no less than sixteen cheetas. 
When Tippoo was killed at the taking of Seringapatam in 1799, two of these 
were sent to England and were kept at Windsor until they died, and it was 

148 



TRAINING A CHE ETA 

with one of them that an attempt was made to give an exhibition of the 
sport in Windsor Park, resulting in a short stampede among the noble 
spectators and a long laugh for all England. 

The Italians, who had close trade relations with the Saracens, intro- 
duced the first trained leopards into Europe. When, in 1459, a French 
ambassador, sent by the Duke of Burgundy to Pope Pius II, stopped on 
his way at Milan, and hunted with Francis Sforza, first Duke of Milan, he 
was astonished to see leopards carried on horseback (on a pillion behind 
their owners) and slipped at hares, which they coursed and killed. An 
illustrated account of such hunting may be read in La Croix's work. 141 

Both Charles VHI and Louis XII of France kept trained animals of 
this kind with which they killed hares and roedeer. After a kill, the cheeta, 
on being shown a little blood in a tin bowl, w T ould leave its prey and 
jump on the horse's crupper behind its master. "One would imagine," 
as J. E. Harting remarks, "that the horse would require almost as much 
training as the cheeta to stand quiet under such circumstances." This 
sport continued among the French nobles until the time of Henry IV, and 
was revived in Germany by Leopold I, who died in 1705, but it was never 
followed in Great Britain. 

In India the sport is still popular, especially among the native 
princes, and is conducted much as of old. Of the many de- 
scriptions of it I prefer that of the senior Kipling, 11 who places 
the picturesqueness of it, as it seems to me, where it belongs : — 

"The Rev. J. G. Wood descants on the great powers of the Orientals 
in training the cheeta or hunting leopard. In this instance the only point 
where real skill comes into play is in the first capture of the 
adult animal, when it has already learned the swift bounding 
onset, — its one accomplishment. The young cheeta is not worth catching, 
for it has not learned its trade, nor can it be taught in captivity. . . . There 
are certain trees where these great dog cats come to play and whet their 
claws. The hunters find such a tree, arrange deer-sinew nooses around it, 
and await the event. The animal comes and is caught by a leg, and it is 
at this point the trouble begins. It is no small achievement for two naked, 
ill-fed men to secure so fierce a captive and carry him home on a cart. 
Then his training commences. He is tied in all directions, principally 
from a thick grummet of rope round his loins, while a hood fitted over his 
head effectually blinds him. He is fastened on a strong cot bedstead, and 
the keepers and their wives and families reduce him to submission by starv- 

149 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

ing him and keeping him awake. His head is made to face the village 
street, and for an hour at a time, several times a day, his keepers make 
pretended rushes at him and wave cloths, staves, and other articles in his 
face. He is talked to continually, and women's tongues are believed to be 
the most effective antisoporifics. No created being could resist the effects 
of hunger, want of sleep, and feminine scolding, and the poor cheeta be- 
comes piteously, abjectly tame. ... Of actual training in the field there is 
little or none. So it is not wonderful that the cheeta loses its natural 
dash and is often left behind by the antelope. At the wedding festivities 
of a Punjab chief the other day, the guests were shown this sport, and the 
cheeta caught and killed a blackbuck ; but it was found the Raja's ser- 
vants, by way of making quite sure, had first hamstrung the poor antelope. 
"The ordained procedure is that the hooded leopard is first taken afield 
on a cart driven near a herd of blackbuck, shown the game, and slipped. 
In a few bounds he reaches and seizes it, is rewarded with a draught of 
blood, or a morsel of liver in a wooden spoon, and put on his cart again ; 
but there is a large proportion of failures. And the creature is not prac- 
ticing a feat he has been taught, but is merely let loose to perform an act he 
learned in his wild state which his keepers cannot teach, and for which, 
in fact, their teaching seems to unfit him." 



Civet Cats, Mungooses, and Meerkats 

Among the earliest carnivorous mammals "viverrine" 
characteristics of structure prevailed, — that is, such features 
as now mark the small, flesh- eating animals which we know 
as civet cats, and place in the family Viverridae. As early as 
the Oligocene period these characteristics became distinctly 
developed in certain forms, and even the typical genus, Viverra, 
may be traced back to that era. One of the most ancient of 
the viverrine lines survives in the foussa, which stands inter- 
mediate between the cats and the civets, having thirty-six teeth, 
of which the hinder ones are very catlike, retractile sheathed 
claws, and other feline peculiarities. It is confined to Mada- 
gascar, where it is the largest beast of prey, not common, and 
very imperfectly known except as a scourge to herds of goats 
and kids. Large specimens nearly equal our puma -in size, 

15° 



CIVETS AND MUNGOOSES 

but the form is slender with high haunches, the color is uniform 
pale brown, and the whole animal more resembles a large eyra. 
Barring this remarkable beast, the family Viverridae falls into 
two divisions : (i) the true civets (viverrines) ; (2) the mungooses 
(herpestines). Both divisions are now limited to Africa and 
southwestern Asia, but in Tertiary times they occupied Europe ; 
none now belong to either America. All are small animals, 
none much larger than a house cat, with flattened bodies, long, 




The Foussa of Madagascar. 



pointed heads, the jaws having normally forty teeth, of which 
the rear ones are doglike ; short limbs, with the claws retractile 
in some, in others not so; long tails and thick coats of fur, 
usually handsomely marked. All are nocturnal, solitary, 
predator}-, and fierce. The species number about forty-five. 

The civets proper (viverrines) have elongated bodies, terrier- 
like heads, small, round five-toed feet with hairy soles and 
sheathed claws, long and often bushy tails, coats 
of rough hair sometimes rising into a crest along the 
spine, and marked on a dark gray ground with black stripes 

151 



Civets. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and bars, and with lengthwise lines of squarish blotches very 
distinctive of the tribe. The fur has some value, particularly 
in China. The habits of these animals are much like those of 
foxes, as they are wholly terrestrial, live in holes in the ground, 
and subsist mainly on birds and small mammals, but some also 
like fish, frogs, snakes, crabs, insects, earthworms, eggs, etc., 
and frequently steal poultry. 

The distinctive peculiarity of the true civet cats is the possession of a 
pair of open pouches beneath the root of the tail, in which (in the male) is 




The African Perfume-yielding Civet Cat. 

secreted an oily substance having an intense musky odor and known as 
" civet." This is present in the five Oriental species, but is most copious 
in the civet cat of northern Africa. Although overpoweringly disgusting 
to our nostrils in its raw state, it is not so to some barbarians, so that it has 
always been used as a perfume in the East, and in Shakespeare's time was 
fashionable in Europe. In parts of Egypt, in Abyssinia, and especially in 
Java, one or another species is kept in captivity for the sake of this secre- 
tion, which is scraped from its pouches every few days and sold to per- 
fumers; as its secretion and flow are increased by irritating the animal, it 
is forced into a long, narrow cage, which has the double effect of infuriating 
the subject and making the use of the spoonlike instrument safe. Civet 
finds a steady market, London alone importing some twenty thousand 
ounces annually. One of the most widespread of Oriental species is the 
rasse, which has no dorsal crest and is a good tree climber; it is easily 
tamed, and in China and Formosa is eaten, despite its strong musky taint. 

152 



GEXETS, LINSANGS, AND PALM CIVETS 



A Madagascar! species, the fossane, closely resembles it externally, but 
has no scent pouch. 

The genets are similar animals, but like weasels in their 
slenderness and activity, prettily marked, and producing hardly 
any musk. They inhabit Africa, with one species along the 
north shore of the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor. When a 
genet is stealing cautiously through the grass it looks more like 
a snake than a mammal. 

Handsomest of the family are the East-Indian linsangs, 
for they are graceful and wear a velvety fur of reddish fawn 
color, marked with lines of large black blotches, Genets and 
becoming rings on the tail. They seek their food, Lmsan s s - 
mainly birds, both on the ground and in trees, and make their 
homes in hollows of trees, where two litters a year are produced. 
There is a West- 
African species 
(Poiana), whose be- 
havior is more like 
that of a genet. 
West Africa also 
possesses a single 
isolated form (Nan- 
dinia) of another 
large and more familiar Asiatic group known as palm civets, or 
"tree cats," because they spend their lives mainly in the palms 
and mangoes, where they sleep by day and prowl by night, 
often several in company. There are about a dozen species, 
ranging from Ceylon around to China and Formosa, and along 
the Malay Archipelago to the Philippines; all have a grayish 
or brownish fur, with the usual dark markings. The only one 
at all well known is the Indian "toddy cat," so called because 
of its fondness for drinking the sweet, intoxicating juice of the 
toddy palm, from the buckets in which the people of southern 
India collect this sap from the tapped trees. This pretty ani- 

*53 




A Paradoxure, 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

mal is fond of making its residence in thatched roofs, and 
becomes an interesting house mate. 

Two other Malayan palm civets, called " small- toothed " ; 
the two hemigales of Borneo, remarkable for the broad, dark 
bands lying across the back; the web-footed, fish-catching, 
and otterlike cynogale; and the black binturong, or "bear 
cat," the only animal of the Old World not a marsupial which 
has a prehensile tail, complete the catalogue of the viverrines. 

Turning now to the second division, the Herpestines, it must 
be noted first that they differ from the viverrines by anatomical 
features ; by the fact that their claws are not retractile ; by the 
absence of scent pouches; and by being unspotted. Sixteen 
of the most typical species form the genus Herpestes, leaving 
a few more for other genera. The smallest are no larger than 
a weasel, while the largest rival a house cat. They are active, 
bold, and predaceous, and live on small mammals, birds and 
ichneu- reptiles, insects and eggs, and occasionally eat 
mons. iruit. They live in holes in the ground and similar 

places. When angry or excited they erect their long hairs, 
especially those of the tail ; and are deadly enemies to snakes. 

Popular interest in these animals centers upon the ability to 
kill dangerous reptiles shown conspicuously by two species, — 
one common all along the south shore of the Mediterranean, 
in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Spain, and the other in India. The 
former is a sleek, mink-shaped but more robust creature, of 
rather large size, the head and body measuring about twenty 
inches, and the tail, which is thick and tapering, about fifteen 
inches more; the color is a uniform brownish grizzle with a 
stripe on the nape and the top of the tail black. 

This animal has always been numerous in the Nile Valley, where the 
Egyptians call it Pharaoh's rat, and the Greek colonists, long before 
the Christian era began, named it ichneumon, that is, " tracker," because 
it was believed to smell out the trails of the crocodiles to and from their 
nests, and then to dig up and eat their eggs. At any rate, it will eat these 

i54 



HABITS OF THE MUNGOOS 

eggs when it comes across them ; and Diodorus Siculus remarks that there 
would have been no safety in sailing upon the Nile but for it. This belief 
was sufficient to cause the Middle Egyptians to protect the ichneumon until 
it became one of their sacred animals, and its cult arose at Heracleopolis, as 
is shown by wall paintings, mummies, etc. Anderson 55 thinks, however, 
that more probably the animal was cherished for its willingness to fight 
asps. Even now it is frequently tamed and kept in Egyptian houses to 
protect them from snakes, rats, and mice. The old term ichneumon is 
now little used, the whole group going by the native name, "mungoos," of 
the more familiar Asiatic species. 

The East Indian mungoos is considerably smaller than the 
Egyptian one, is more rufous in hue, and has no black mark- 
ings; it occurs throughout peninsular India and 

& & r Mungoos. 

Ceylon, but not east of the Bay of Bengal. It inhab- 
its thickets, broken, bushy ground, and village fields rather 
than dense forests, and makes its home in holes among rocks 
or in the earth. Its multiplication is rapid. Snakes and 
lizards, small birds and rodents, are the items oftenest on its 
bill of fare, and it is an arrant poultry thief. "I have often 
seen it," Jerdon writes, "make a dash into a veranda where 
some cages of mynas, parrakeets, etc., were daily placed, and 
endeavor to tear the birds from their cages." In spite of this 
weasel-like fierceness, it is easily tamed, not only as a useful 
mouser (for which thousands are kept in the East) but because 
it makes a gentle and affectionate pet, often seen in the company 
of wandering Hindoo snake charmers and showmen. These 
virtues led to the introduction of the mungoos into Jamaica 
in 1872, to destroy the rats which beset the plantations of 
sugar cane and seemed unconquerable. The surprising results 
of the experiment have been related in a book by D. Morris, 170 
and in many newspaper articles. The general effect I have 
summed up elsewhere as follows : — 

"At first they were highly beneficial, reducing the stated annual loss 
from rats from $500,000 to one half that, but in less than twenty years the 
island was almost overrun with them. Not only did they kill rats and mice, 

155 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

however, but snakes, lizards, ground birds, and even poultry. At one 
time snakes had become so rare that they were regarded as practically ex- 
terminated, but since 1896 they are apparently on the increase. The 
ground doves and other terrestrial birds, partly, at least, by change of habit, 
are also adapting themselves to this new enemy, and their extermination 
is no longer to be feared. At the present time the mungoos is common and 
very tame in most parts of the island, and in many other islands, and is 
generally looked on with favor." A similar experience was had in Porto 
Rico and Hawaii, and the laws of the United States now prohibit the im- 
portation of a single one of these animals. 



As a skillful conqueror of venomous serpents the mungoos 
has attracted attention since ancient times. Aristotle and Pliny 
declared that the Egyptian mungoos first coated its body with 
mud, and in that armor could defy the serpent. Old Topsell m 
informs us that the ichneumon burrows in the sand, and "when 
the aspe espyeth her threatening rage, presently turning about 
her taile, provoketh the ichneumon to combate, and with an 
open mouth and lofty head doth enter the list, to her owne perdi- 
tion. For the ichneumon being nothing afraid of this great 
bravado, receiveth the encounter, and taking the head of the 
aspe in his mouth biteth that off to prevent the casting out of 
her poison." 

It is a widespread belief in India that a certain herb is eaten 
by the mungoos when wounded in a bout with a cobra, and this 
notion has been carried to the West Indies, where the little 
creature attacks the fer-de-lance ; but it has no foundation in 
fact. The mungoos is not always eager for the fight, nor in- 
variably successful, being sometimes killed and swallowed by 
the snake; but ordinarily it is victorious through its amazing 
activity and skill, aided by the thick fur which stands straight 
out when it is enraged, so that the serpent's fangs rarely hit the 
small body at the center of the restless, hairy mass in front of 
him. The mungoos waits, alert and tense, until the snake 
strikes, then dodges, and before the reptile can recover pounces 

156 



SOUTH AFRICA X MEERKATS 

upon it and crushes the head, which it then eats, poison and 
all. 

The other ichneumons of both Africa and Asia differ from these 
two only in minor particulars, mainly of color. An Abyssinian 
one sports an extraordinary pure white tail, shaped like that of 
a horse ! One East Indian species distinguishes itself by a 
diet of frogs. Certain more different ones live on the West 
Coast of Africa, and a curiously distinct group is native to 
Madagascar. An aberrant species, the suricate, or "meerkat," 
of South Africa, is a pet on almost every Boer farm, — and it 
is no wonder, after reading Mrs. Martin's account of it : — 




Win i e-taii ed Ichneumon. 



" In their wild state the meerkats live in colonies or warrens, burrowing 
deep holes in the sandy soil, and feeding chiefly on succulent bulbs, which 
they scratch up with their long, curved black claws. They 
are devoted sun worshipers, and in the early morning, before 
it is daylight, they emerge from their burrows, and wait in rows until their 
divinity appears, when they bask joyfully in his beams. They are very 
numerous on the Karoo, and, as you ride or drive along through the veldt, 
you often come upon little colonies of them sitting up sunning themselves, 
and looking in their quaint and pretty favorite attitude like tiny dogs beg- 
ging. . . . The quaint, old-fashioned little fellow is as neatly made as a 
small bird; his coat, of the softest fur, with markings not unlike those of 
a tabby cat, is always well made and spotlessly clean ; his tiny feet, ears, 
and nose are all most daintily and delicately finished off; and his broad 
circle of black, bordering his large dark eye, serves like the antimony of 

157 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

an Egyptian beauty, to enhance the size and brilliancy of the orbs. . . . 
His bright, pretty little face is capable of assuming the greatest variety of 
expressions, that which it most frequently wears when in repose being a 
contented, self-satisfied smirk, impudence and independence displaying 
themselves at every line of his plump little figure. ... He is absolutely 
without fear, and with consummate coolness and audacity will walk up to 
the largest and most forbidding-looking dog, although a perfect stranger 
to him, and, carefully investigating the stranger on all sides with great 
curiosity, express disgust and defiance in a succession of little short, sharp, 
barks." m 

There lives in the unforested parts of Africa a strange and 

rather rare animal called aard-wolf (i.e. "earth wolf") by the 

Boers, and deeb among the Arabs of Upper Egypt, which 

somewhat resembles a lame, thin-bodied, striped 

Aard-wolf. 

hyena, but has longer ears and a more pointed muz- 
zle. The tail is long and bushy, the reddish, black-striped coat 
is coarse and long, and rises in anger along the ridge of the neck 
and back into a bristling crest. It has five toes in front and 
four behind, and its skull and teeth are somewhat like those 
of a mungoos, the latter being small and weak and only thirty 
or thirty-two in number. Consequently, although it dwells 
in pairs in burrows of its own digging, and wanders abroad 
at night in search of carrion like a hyena, it cannot manage 
tough food, and subsists largely by digging termites out of 
their hills. Schulz, 152 who calls this animal "ant bear," says 
that the natives of the dry deserts between the Zambesi and 
Chobe rivers go down its hole, one man holding to the legs of 
another, and a third at the mouth of the hole holding the lat- 
ter's feet, to get wet earth from which to squeeze moisture and 
so save themselves from famishing of thirst. 

This aard-wolf, for which some naturalists make a separate family (Pro- 
telidae), stands intermediate between the mungooses and the hyenas, and 
seems to reproduce pretty closely a bone-breaking animal well known as a 
fossil in the early Pliocene rocks of central Europe and Asia, named Icti- 
therium, in which the characters of the Viverridae and the Hyaenidae are 
so blended that they cannot be separated. After him, however, we find a 

158 




M>1 



> V T 



•$z 


m. . — in** 


AFRICAN AARD-WOLF, OR PROTELES 




NORTH AIRKAN STRIPED HYENA 



STRENGTH OF THE HYENA 

line of fossil animals developing the hyena side, and departing more and 
more from the civet-cat type, until they lead to the modern hyenas and the 
aard-wolf. 

The hyenas compose a family of only three living species, 
but many fossil ones (none American), leading back to Pal- 
hyena and Ictitherium. They have a bulky 
body, supported by muscular legs, and big, dog- y enas - 
like heads, with very strong jaws and thirty-four massive coni- 
cal teeth, so that "a hyena is able to crunch in its jaws the 
shin bone of an ox almost as readily as a dog can crush that 
of a fowl." The whole frame, indeed, is built for strength. 
F. C. Selous describes how in the Mashuna's country one 
night a big, spotted hyena sneaked into his camp where a crowd 
of men and dogs were lounging around the fire, and seized 
and carried away a green eland hide which must have weighed 
forty pounds; and although the thief was at once chased it 
dragged that burden three hundred yards before the dogs could 
catch up with it. They are scavengers, not hunters; and go 
forth by night to feed upon what their betters leave, or to pull 
down some small or disabled animal. Their courage is seldom 
great, but with their timidity goes a certain cunning and half- 
stupid boldness which leads them to make daring forays on 
occasion; but when caught they submit abjectly. 

The most widely known one is the striped hyena, one of 
the smaller species, measuring about three feet from the nose 
to the rather short tail, and weighing sixty to seventy pounds. 
It is scattered from southern India eastward to the Caucasus, 
and down into Arabia and Africa, as far as Somaliland and 
the Sudan. It has sloping haunches, high, pointed ears, and 
a yellowish gray coat, bristling along the spine, and marked 
with narrow, transverse stripes of blackish and tawny. It 
frequents open, rocky country for the most part, and where 
there are caves, ruins, or rock-cut tombs, will often take perma- 
nent possession of one for a den instead of digging a burrow. 

i59 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Here, in the course of years, accumulates a grisly collection of broken 
bones ; for often it can find nothing better than a skeleton which the jackals 
and vultures have picked clean, leaving the bones to be cracked for their 
marrow in the vicelike jaws of this slinking marauder. This hyena is a 
solitary animal, more than a pair being rarely seen, nor are even they often 
visible, since their visits to cultivated districts are, as a rule, made only 
during the dark hours. In Egypt they commonly select some hill in the 
desert, the weathered beds of which afford the only protection against the 
sun. "They sleep hard throughout the day, selecting that part of their 
domicile which affords the greatest comfort, taking into account the direc- 
tion of the wind, heat of the sun, etc. . . . When disturbed they show no 
fight, but only an anxiety to make off with all possible haste." Anderson 55 
further observes that the animal keeps its coat very clean, and is usually 
silent. In Asia, as in Egypt, this hyena is more hated than feared, and both 
Hindoos and Arabs charge it, probably with truth, with digging human 
corpses out of graves and devouring them. Hence the Hindoos are likely 
to put a captured one to death by torture. The Arabs do not do this, but 
cherish many superstitions about the beast, as that it changes its sex from 
year to year ; that its humanlike howls are a lure for the unwary ; and that 
it has in its eye a stone which if placed under a man's tongue endows him 
with the gift of prophecy. The Arabs of Mesopotamia say it understands 
Arabic ; and when they creep into its den, and put a rope around its craven 
neck, they flatter it with apologies and compliments as they haul it out, and 
imagine it fooled into its cowardly acquiescence. Yet Anderson found the 
Nile men very keen to obtain its heart, which they eat, believing that they 
thus absorb the "courage" of the brute. They also save the whiskers to 
wear as a charm. This hyena frequently seizes dogs or even sheep and 
kids, and rushes away to its den, whence they are sometimes recovered 
with no serious injury, if quickly followed; but it never attacks larger ani- 
mals or human beings. 

The brown hyena, or "straand wolf," is a related species 
native to the southern and eastern coast- regions of Africa, 
in which the dorsal crest becomes so long as to hang like a 
mantle, concealing the body and neck on each side ; this mantle 
is dark elsewhere but nearly white on the cheeks and throat, 
giving the effect of gray side whiskers to the face. Not much 
is known of its manner of life. 

More familiar to readers of books of travel is the spotted 

1 60 



FORAYS BY HYENAS 

hyena, the biggest, strongest, and most dangerous of the three. 
It ranges throughout Africa south of the Sahara, and in prehis- 
toric times into south-central Europe and Asia, as is Spotted 
proved by remains formerly separated as the cave Hyena- 
hyena. 83 The Dutch colonists call it "wolf," or "tiger wolf," 
the leopard being to them a "tiger." This repulsive and 
troublesome brute stands about two and a half feet high at the 
shoulder, and five and a half in total length, of which the 
bushy tail takes about fifteen inches. Its unkempt fur, coarse 
and bristly, is dun, irregularly blotched with circular blackish 
spots. This species also lives in a den in the rocks or under- 
ground, and prowls for carrion ; but it kills for itself and gains 
courage by numbers, since it goes about in small packs, unit- 
ing to reach their prey by a rude sort of strategy and then over- 
come it by brute ferocity. They play havoc with sheep — or, 
rather, used to do so, for now they are nearly killed out of 
settled parts — and get many victims among the small native 
cattle and donkeys. The early travelers, like Livingstone 
and Harris, say much of such losses, which frequently extend 
to human beings, many children in southern Egypt being 
carried off, even nowadays, or so mauled that their faces are 
mutilated for life. 

A traveler in Somaliland in 1892 had a spotted hyena attack 
and nearly kill one of his camels in broad daylight. It was 
one of a pack of six, all old males, which had so terrorized the 
neighborhood that women or children did not dare go about. 
Mr. Clarke shot the others, one by one; and each time the 
living came and lugged away the dead and hid the bodies un- 
der bushes, keeping off vultures, but making no motion to- 
ward eating them, as is their usual custom. 

The terrific noise made by these creatures seems to baffle 

adequate description, — a weird, hideous, coughing laughter 

which, when a pack joins in, makes so horrible a din in the 

darkness of a mid-African night as to drive the lonely way- 

m 161 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

farer mad. Yet in the early days hyenas swarmed all over 
South Africa, not only because game was abundant, but be- 
cause the Kaffirs never destroyed them, holding them sacred 
as the means of disposing of their dead, since only their chiefs 
and young children were buried — in the ground. 

The Fur Bearers 

There now present themselves a company of small carniv- 
ores, whose coats are of that soft and thick pelage which we 
call fur, — the martens, weasels, badgers, ratels, skunks, otters, 
and their kin of the family Mustelidae. Their structure in 
general is near the civet type ; and the "testimony of the rocks " 
shows that if this line be not an ancient branch from the civet 
stock, at any rate it has sprung from the same root.. In the 
Upper Eocene formations of France, for example, are found 
such small, tall-legged animals as the genus Plesictis, which 
seem to be generalized civet cats (viverroids) with features, 
especially as to the teeth, now distinctive of the Mustelidae; 
and after them appeared others in which these features were 
more developed, until in the Miocene and Pliocene eras came 
true weasels, badgers, otters, etc., at first in Europe, but soon 
spreading all over the northern hemisphere. None of these 
was of an existing species, or even as a rule of any existing 
genus, but there is no doubt of their near relationship. The 
family falls into three sections: the martens, grisons, weasels, 
and wolverines (Mustelinae) ; the badgers, skunks, etc. (Me- 
linae) ; and the otters (Lutrinae). They constitute an army 
of sharp-toothed, keen-witted, bloodthirsty devourers of the 
small life of the world, doing in the North the police work 
which in the Oriental tropics is committed to the civet cats 
and mungooses. 

These are the animals whose coats, acquired to keep them- 
selves warm amid arctic frosts, make our most beautiful furs, 
as sable, marten, mink, ermine, and the rest. The sable is 

162 




Canadian Pine Marten and Squirrel. 



163 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Siberian, the marten is North European, and its American 
brother is the pine marten, or "sable," of the Canadian forests. 
The three are scarcely distinguishable, each averag- 
ing about eighteen inches in length, plus seven or 
eight inches of tail, and are brown, somewhat lighter below 
(throat and breast-spot orange in the Canadian sable), and 
variable according to age, sex, and season. The winter fur 
is thick, soft, an inch and a half deep, of richest hue, and has 
scattered through it coarse black hairs which the furrier pulls 
out; the tail is somewhat bushy. The body is elongated and 
supple, the legs short, and the toes separate, with sharp, long 
claws, as behooves so expert a tree climber. The martens 
exhibit great agility and grace in their movements, and live 
usually in trees, furnishing with a bed of leaves a lofty hollow 
in a decaying trunk or sometimes a rocky crevice. Here the 
young are brought forth in litters of six to eight early each 
spring. 

Europe has also a '.'beech," "stone," or "sweet" marten 
of duller hue and with a white breast; and in India the local 
marten is blackish brown above and the breast orange-yellow; 
while North America contains the giant of the tribe in Pen- 
nant's marten, named by the early French Canadians pekan, 
and by modern trappers "fisher," "black cat," or "black fox," 
— it being none of the three ! In general manner of life all 
these fur bearers are alike, yet with many a specific or individ- 
ual peculiarity, as one may learn who will talk with hunters 
or read the books of Pennant, 174 Hearne, 181 Richardson, 183 
De Kay, 182 Audubon and Bachman, 90 and the narratives of 
the fur country. The most pertinent parts of these accounts 
have been brought together by Dr. Elliott Coues, whose "Fur- 
bearing Animals " 175 is the foremost authority on the group. 

For two hundred and fifty years the Canadian marten has 
supplied, as had the sable for perhaps as many centuries, the 
most valuable furs sent to market, excepting a few rarities 

164 



PINE MARTEN AND PEKAN 

like sea otter. Originally this marten occurred wherever forests 
grew, from the central United States to the arctic coast; 
and was so plentiful that periodically it overflowed 

,. . . i • , i • Marten. 

certain districts and spread in hordes, scattering 
far and wide in search of food. On the other hand, periods 
of astonishing scarcity of martens occur every eight or ten 
years, no cause for which is known. 

"This species everywhere rapidly fades away before the approach of 
civilization. They keep mostly to the trees, and hence like the denser 
parts of the forest, but they constantly descend to the ground for food, es- 
pecially in winter, when they regularly hunt for hares and grouse of all kinds, 
trailing them with nose to the track like hounds. Their broad feet enable 
them to move rapidly, even over soft snow. They also hunt persistently 
for squirrels, chase them in the trees and on the ground, and enter their 
nests. To this fare is added whatever mice and birds and small fare comes 
their way. Martens have little to fear from native enemies; the much 
larger fisher is said to kill them, and the great horned owl may now and 
then pounce on one, but very few of the carnivores care to taste their flesh 
unless driven to it by extreme hunger. They are trapped from November 
until toward March, when their coats begin to become ragged and dull in 
hue, and with the approach of the rutting season they are no longer attracted 
by the baits offered by trappers." 20 

Pennant's marten, or the "pekan," is an American species 
remarkable for its great size — about twenty- four inches, 
plus thirteen inches of tail — and for its doglike 

v & Fisher. 

head. It has always been rare near settlements, 
has long been nearly extinct south of the Hudson Bay water- 
shed, and now is a great prize for the trapper even in the far 
northern wilderness. Though long known as "fisher," it cer- 
tainly does not catch fish ; the name may have originated, as 
De Kay suggests, because it constantly stole the bait from 
mink traps, and raided the Indian's stores of frozen fish. It 
does worse mischief than that, however, for it will follow a line 
of marten traps and rob them of both bait and catch with the 
skill and immunity for which the carcajou is infamous. 

165 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

In general habits and food the fisher is, in short, an exaggerated marten, 
which keeps more to the ground and prefers the wet rather than the dry 
parts of the forest, and has a special taste in summer for frogs. Wonder- 
fully quick and strong in leaping, or for a short run, either on the ground or 
among tree branches, it makes easy prey not only of squirrels, mice, etc., 
but of such larger creatures as the muskrat, coon, skunk, and porcupine — 
the last named by Richardson as its favorite food, procured by "biting the 
belly." Audubon questioned this statement — "in what manner it is able 
to overturn the porcupine" \ but the explanation is that the attempt is made 
only in winter, when the fisher bores his way through the snow and comes 
up beneath the porcupine, who sits on the surface thinking itself secure 
in its armor of quills, and unsuspicious of the burrowing strategy of its wily 
foe. Even the bear, according to Colonel Brackett, U.S.A., is likely to be 
despoiled of her baby cubs by this hungry prowler when she leaves them 
alone in her den. Its own young, born usually in a hollow tree or log, 
number two or three. When attacked by men or dogs it fights with the feroc- 
ity of a wildcat and the deathless courage and tenacity of a weasel. 

This big species stands between the typical martens and 

a still larger and more powerful mustelid common -to both 

, . hemispheres, and called glutton in the Old World 

Wolverine. . 7 . 

and wolverine, or "carcajou," in the New. Were 
one to judge of it by the stories of the forest people alone, it 
could hardly be considered anything else than a sort of devil 
on four legs, with a heart as full of malice as its brain is surely 

full of wit. This is 
no worse, nor more 
erroneous, than the 
animal's reputation 
in Europe, where 
the glutton is rep- 
resented in old books 
as a ravenous and 

disgusting monster 
The Wolverine or Glutton. ° ° 

of ferocity and cun- 
ning. In reality the creature is simply, to use the phrase 
of Dr. Coues, whose book 175 devotes a long chapter to the 

1 66 




T AYR AS AND WEASELS 

animal's diabolical record among the trappers, an uncommonly 
large, clumsy, shaggy marten, of great strength, and display- 
ing extreme perseverance and sagacity in procuring food where 
the supply is limited and precarious. 

Two smaller but very savage and troublesome relatives of 
the martens dwell in Central and South America — the tayra 
and the grison, or huron. Both are terrestrial and mainly 
nocturnal, and are remarkable for being darker on their ventral 
than on their dorsal surfaces. W. H. Hudson says that on 
the pampas the black tayras hunt in companies, and are often 
seen; "and when these long-bodied creatures sit up erect, 
glaring with beady eyes, grinning and chattering at the passer- 
by, they look like little friars in black robes and gray cowls ; 
but the expression on their round faces is malignant and blood- 
thirsty." These are weasel traits rather than those of mar- 
tens, and result from their unmartenlike, terrestrial mode of life. 

The weasels, ermines, stoats, polecats, minks, and the like 
form a group distinctly northern, although one species ranges 
southward into the Andes. Slender, lithe, per- weasel 
fectly toothed, sharp-clawed, secretively colored, 
and endowed with strength, speed, cleverness, and indomi- 
table courage, the weasels are the scourge and terror of all 
the small ground-keeping animals, and do more than any 
other class of agents to restrain mice, gophers, and similar 
nuisances. Some or all can climb, but their preference for 
the ground distinguishes them from the martens, as also do 
the comparatively short tail, close fur, three instead of four 
premolar teeth, and the presence of anal glands whence they 
may discharge a fetid odor. This musky, nauseous secretion 
is most copious and evident in the large European polecat, 
but most distressing to human nostrils in an old mink ; and 
ordinarily it is not very noticeable in a weasel. Its emission 
is under control, and becomes perceivable mainly when the 
animal is excited or alarmed. Its service seems to be that 

167 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Polecat. 




of attracting the sexes; and trappers save it to put upon their 
bait as an additional allurement. 

The polecat, or "foumart," of Europe is about two feet long, 
of which the bushy tail occupies 5-7 inches, and its fur is long, 
loose, dark brown, and known as " fitch." The Sibe- 
rian and Tibetan polecats are similar species, and 
a smaller mottled kind is common from the Danube to the 
Indus. All are more dreaded by gamekeepers and farmers 
who wish to raise game and poultry than are any other ani- 
mals; and the wild polecat has become nearly extinct in west- 
ern Europe, but survives, and its bloodthirsty zeal is utilized, 

in our ferrets, which are 
probably only an albinistic 
variety that have acquired 
sufficient docility to be set 
at the pursuit of rabbits 
and vermin for the bene- 
fit of their masters. 
They are rarely tame 
enough even to be handled 
in safety, although the 
breed has been semidomesticated for centuries, and this, no 
doubt, is about the extent to which the ancient Romans and 
Greeks "trained" the stone martens they used as ratters. 

Our plains are the home of a relative, buffy or whitish 
in general hue, with a dark, saddlelike patch on the back, 
the face crossed by a broad band of sooty black, and the feet 
and outer end of the thin tail black. This is the black-footed 
ferret, which, described and figured first by Audubon, eluded 
further observation for many years ; and even now is not well 
known, though it is plain that it preys chiefly on prairie dogs. 
In the older books, even down to and including Coues's 
" Fur-bearing Animals," the North American weasels were 
considered to be of only four species; namely, the common 

168 



Black-footed Ferret. 



VARIETIES OF WEASELS 

least- or short-tailed weasel of the East ; the ermine ; the long- 
tailed northwestern weasel; and the bridled weasel living on 
the Pacific coast and in Mexico. But, in 1896, Outram Bangs 
and C. Hart Merriam examined the collections of skins and 
skulls in the National Museum at Washington and elsewhere, 
and announced that we had twenty-two species and subspecies, 
none precisely the same as those of Europe. Most of them, 
however, belong to the West and far North, and naturalists 
of a less radical school will probably refuse to admit so much 
specific distinction. At any rate, they differ little in general 
character, and such peculiarities as belong to each Merriam 
connects with their food. Thus he finds that the group of 
northern weasels represented by Putorius cicognani flour- 
ishes only in the country where the meadow mice (Microtus) 
abound ; the large western weasel, P. longicauda, does not range 
much outside of the re- 
gion inhabited by the 
pocket gophers on which 
it feeds; the black-footed 
one frequents only the 
prairie-dog country south- 
ward ; and "in the far 
North, where the frozen 
tundras are inhabited by California br.dled weasel. 

lemmings as well as voles, two weasels are present : the tiny, 
narrow-skulled 'rixosus,' which feeds mainly on mice, and 
the large, broad-skulled 'arcticus' [analogue of the true 
ermine] on lemmings and rabbits." With these fine points 
of classification we need not here concern ourselves. A 
weasel, in the Old World or in the New, in Labrador, or 
Florida, or Mexico, on the Yukon as on the Hudson, is 
substantially the same, — a keen, agile, relentless, indomitable 
hunter, within his powers a being of the highest type of 
effectiveness. 

169 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"Swift and sure-footed, he makes open chase and runs down his prey; 
keen of scent he tracks them, and makes the fatal spring upon them una- 
Weasel wares ; lithe and of extraordinary slenderness of body, he fol- 

Traits. lows the smaller through the intricacies of their hidden abodes, 

and kills them in their homes. And if he does not kill for the simple love 
of taking life, in gratification of superlative bloodthirstiness, he at any rate 
kills instinctively more than he can possibly require for his support. I 
know not where to find a parallel among the larger Carnivora. Yet once 
more, which one of the larger animals will defend itself or its young at such 
enormous odds ? A glance at the physiognomy of the weasels would suffice 
to betray their character. The teeth are almost of the highest known 
raptorial character; the jaws are worked by enormous masses of muscles 
covering all the side of the skull. The forehead is low and the nose is sharp ; 
the eyes are small, penetrating, cunning, and glitter with an angry green 
light. There is something peculiar, moreover, in the way this fierce face 
surmounts a body extraordinarily wiry, lithe, and muscular. It ends a 
remarkably long and slender neck in such a way that it may be held at 
a right angle with the axis of the latter. When the creature is glancing 
around, with the neck stretched up, and flat, triangular head bent forward, 
swaying from one side to the other, we catch the likeness in a moment, — 
it is the image of a serpent." So writes Dr. Coues. 175 

. Out of the many things which might be said further in respect 
to these interesting little bandits, whose bright eyes gleam out 
at you from a cranny in a lichen-scaled wall "like dewdrops 
caught in a spider's web," as Rowland Robinson pictures it, 
one thing only can be given space — the change of color 
from summer's brown to winter's white and back again each 
year, which so many undergo, and which gives value to ermine. 

"Ermine" is the modern form of the ancient Teutonic name of the 
weasel known in Great Britain as "stoat"; but the term is rarely used 
anywhere now except for the fur of its white winter dress. The pelts 
come to market from Alaska, Canada, Lapland, Russia, and Siberia, and 
are used not only for ladies' garments, but for the robes of kings and 
nobles, and for their crowns and coronets. This came to be 
a matter for royal regulation in England from the time of Ed- 
ward III, various ranks of officers being designated by the way the ermine 
tails were arranged. It was especially prominent in the regalia of judges; 
and the idea survives in our figurative expression "the ermine" for the ju- 

170 



ERMINE EXPLAINED 



dicial office. Its use as a symbol of rank led to a recognition of ermine 
in heraldry as one of the eight "furs," represented by an arrangement of 
points indicating the black-tipped tails which, in making up ermine fur, 
are inserted ornamentally in contrast with the pure white of the field. 




A Weasel in the " Ermine," or Winter, Dress. 

The ermine weasel in summer is brown, individuals differ- 
ing in color from light yellowish to a rich dark mahogany hue, 
according to locality, freshness of the coat, health, etc. The 
chin, throat, and inside of the limbs are sharply white, and the 
chest and abdomen are sulphury yellow — neither white, as 
in the southern weasel, nor orange as in the plains and bridled 
weasels, the last (of the Pacific coast) further distinguished 
by its beautiful black-and-white face. The end of the tail 
in every species but one is black; the exception is the tiny 
P. rixosus of the Canadian Northwest, which is only six inches 
in total length, and the brown of whose summer coat continues 
to the tip of the tail. This last is the smallest carnivore. 

Now, in common with many animals of boreal regions, 
this coat is shed in the late autumn and rapidly winter 
replaced by a much longer and denser one for win- 
ter wear, which in northern weasels is wholly white except 
the black tail end. This change of color takes place in all 

171 



Whiteness. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

weasels of both continents wherever the climate is so cold 
that snow lies continuously on the ground from autumn until 
spring. The British stoat and our own weasels remain brown 
in winter (though paler) south of the line of persistent snow, 
and turn white north of it, and also on lofty (and consequently 
cold) mountain tops. On the Cascade Mountains along Pu- 
get Sound you may collect in winter brown weasels in 
the coast valleys, drab ones halfway up the range, and pure 
white ones on the summit. The change in color appears to 
be wholly beyond the will of the animal, and to be due to the 
shedding of the old hairs and their replacement by hairs which 
come in wholly white, but it appears that the process may be 
hastened by the early arrival of cold and snow, or retarded by 
a late season. The same molt takes place in warm regions, 
but there the new hair comes in brown instead of white. Nev- 
ertheless it is impossible to dismiss wholly the old belief that 
the change is brought about in some cases at least by the grad- 
ual blanching of the hairs ; for we cannot dispose of such facts 
as Dr. Coues's statement that he had seen many autumnal 
skins in which the hairs were white at the roots and dark 
at the tips. A very full discussion of this subject may be found 
in Poulton's 178 and Beddard's 179 books on animal coloration, 
and in Lydekker's " Mostly Mammals." 

As to the purpose of the change, it seems evident, at least, that it is bene- 
ficial in two ways. First, in screening the weasel from the eyes of both its 
enemies and its prey, by making it unnoticeable amid the snow; and second, 
in helping it to retain its bodily heat, which would be radiated more rapidly 
by a dark dress than by a light one. How far the former advantage is 
neutralized by the fact that its principal victims in winter, the hares, lem- 
mings, and ptarmigan, are equally "invisibly" white, the reader may deter- 
mine for himself. 

The mink is the last, and one of the most important and 
interesting, of this tribe, — a musteline with toes somewhat 
webbed, and of stouter build than a weasel, about twenty-eight 

172 



HABITS OF MINKS 

inches long, a quarter of which belongs to the somewhat 
bushy tail. Normally in the East it is chestnut-brown, with 
a white spot on the chin and sometimes others 
below, and the tail darkening toward its end. 
The animal is distributed practically all over the continent, 
regardless of civilization, which interferes little with its mak- 
ing a living. Alaskan and Pacific-coast examples are larger 
and darker, while those of the Gulf states are lighter both in 
weight and color. A second, rather small, species is found 
in the South Atlantic states, russet in color, with irregular 
white markings on the chin and under parts, and the tail chest- 
nut toward the tip. A mink is well known in northern Eu- 
rope, and another species contributes fine dark pelts from 
Siberia. The fur of all northern kinds is of great beauty and 
value when taken early in the season; and the trapping of 
minks not only engages the attention of a surprising number 
of professional trappers in every part of the Union and of Can- 
ada, but puts many a dollar into the pockets of farm boys 
winter after winter. Moreover, in many localities, more or 
less success has followed the keeping and breeding of minks 
in captivity for the sake of their fur, and also to dispose of 
young ones to be trained as ratters. 

Our literature of natural history, from Coues's studied mono- 
graph 175 to the half -poetic notes of Thoreau, abounds in bio- 
graphical materials, — none more truthful and vivid than 
those in the books of W. E. Cram. 52;10 ° 



"Minks," says this observer, in part, "combine the habits of the land 
and water hunters more successfully perhaps than any other animal. In 
warm weather they are fond of exploring wet swamps and low lands, where 
they find an abundance of frogs and lizards, and dig all sorts of grubs, 
beetles, and earthworms from the black, peaty soil and leaf mold around 
old, weather-beaten stumps and rotten logs. TJhey are most inveterate 
nest robbers and mousers, chasing the little blunt-headed, furry meadow 
mice along their runways in the thick grass being their favorite sport. 

173 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"In April the female fixes herself a cozy nest in some hole among the 
rocks, or inside a hollow log or stump, generally hidden away among flags 
and bulrushes beside a stream. ... 

"In winter, when the still waters are frozen, they haunt open rapids and 
warm springs in the woods, or finding entrance beneath the ice of closed 
brooks, make extended excursions along the dim buried channel, alternately 
running beneath the ice and along the brook's border where the falling away 
of the water has left a narrow strip of unfrozen turf beneath ice and snow. 
Here they catch small fish and meadow mice, or, tracing the brook's 
course down to the wider reaches of the river, find larger fish and muskrats 
to try their strength upon. Water, however, is not essential to the minks' 
happiness at any season, for they can hunt rabbits all winter long in the 
snow as successfully as the sable or fisher. . . . 

"The mink is endowed with boundless resources in the face of danger 
as well as in the matter of getting a living. Wander where he will day or 
night, it is of small consequence whether the enemy that attacks him is fox, 
dog, wild cat, otter, or owl, he is always within a couple of jumps of some 
place of refuge. If the water is near, he dives without a splash and darts 
away like a fish, almost as much at home as the fish themselves in the swirl- 
ing depths of the eddies and dim passages beneath sunken logs and drift- 
wood, only coming to the surface here and there for a breath until the 
enemy is left hopelessly behind. When the water is not within reach, he 
can go up the nearest tree like a squirrel, or dart into any hole or crevice 
that would hide a rat; and lacking this, can outrun and outdodge any 
ordinary pursuer." 

The agile, slender, short-toed, cat-clawed fur bearers we 
have been considering have a group of relatives which are 
stout-bodied, slow, long-toed, and long-clawed, and which 
search for their livelihood on the ground or under it, — the 
ratels, badgers, skunks, and the like. 

This subfamily (Melinae) is distinguished for nauseous 
smell and conspicuous coloration. These two features seem 
Fetid Fur to §° together, and several of these animals have 
Bearers. i on g fig Urec i as stock examples of what Wallace 185 
termed warning coloration. "On the back of every skunk 
are bold white bands and patches alternating with coal-black, 
making it an object visible and attractive to brute curiosity 

174 






WARNING COLORS 

from a long distance; but, as if to increase this notoriety 
to its utmost, the animal always hoists its tail, and the tip 
of it — or, in some species, the whole of this pomponlike ap- 
pendage — is glaring white. Conspicuous ? You can see it 
bobbing along above the grass as far away as you can see any- 
thing of its size." A similar contrast of colors is displayed 
by most other species; but whether the signal is heeded, and 
these animals so escape attack by the larger beasts and birds 
of prey as often as the theory requires, is a more doubtful 
matter, which I have discussed at some length elsewhere. 36 

The characteristic odor proceeds from a pair of glands, one on each side 
of the vent of the rectum, and its primary purpose, no doubt, is connected 
with the need for the mutual attraction of the sexes in the mating season. 
When not excited to discharge it, few of these animals emit a bad odor, and 
tame skunks and badgers are no more offensive than other flesh-eating 
pets, even when the glands have not been surgically removed, as is often 
done; nor do they soil their fur or their habitations except by accident. 

A connecting link between the musteline and the present, or 
meline, groups is found in the African zorillas, of which the 
best known is the Cape polecat, — an almost exact miniature 
of our skunk, and giving an equally offensive secretion; it 

and its Egvptian and Svrian cousins are noted 

i • i • i i RateL 

poultry thieves, but are sometimes kept as tamed 

mousers. An allied East Indian genus (Helictis) contains the 
"ferret badgers," small, bushy tailed, gayly colored, tree- 
climbing, omnivorous forest animals of India and the Malay 
Islands. Next comes the "ratel," as it is known in Africa, or 
"Indian badger" in Asia. It is a powerful animal, bigger 
than a badger and of similar shape, but black on the face and 
lower half of the body up to a line running from the forehead 
and above the small ears along the sides to the top of the tail, 
above which the color is gray; the creature thus looks as if it 
wore a white-edged blanket. Heuglin gives the Arab name as 
"abu djaga," and says it feeds on all sorts of larvae and grubs, 

i75 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and is particularly fond of the honey and wax of bees. A hole 
in a hillside or river bank serves it as a den. Here a pair 
live in fair security, coming forth at night to search for such 
small mammals, birds, frogs, insects, etc., as it can catch or 
dig up. In the north of India the natives call it "gravedigger," 
and say it exhumes human corpses ; but this charge is false. Its 
great foreclaws enable it to tear ant-hills to pieces, and to ex- 
cavate the subterranean nests of bees, to which it is constantly 
lead by the honey-guide bird. 

"I once had a pet ratel in the Punjab," writes a British officer, "which 
used to follow me about the house and garden like a dog, and was perfectly 
tame, although somewhat rough with strangers. It seldom tasted animal 
food, lived on sweetened rice and milk, bazaar sweetmeats, fruits of all sorts, 
but, above all things, was fond of raw eggs, and had one every morning for 
breakfast. It used to play half the day with a wanderoo monkey I was the 
happy possessor of, and would drive away and utterly put to flight a poor 
old doggie of mine who used to try to make friends. A man on the scaffold 
I have no doubt would have laughed to see the beejoo (for such is its name 
among the natives) and the black monkey endeavoring to unravel a hedge- 
hog, an attempt which, I need not say, was never a success. This animal 
has the loosest -fitting skin of any mammal of my acquaintance; it seems 
as if he could be shaken out of his skin, an advantage probably he may be 
thankful for when baited or drawn by dogs, a cruel proceeding I never 
permitted with my Bijou, which naturally became its familiar name." 

Two related animals of the East are the teludu, or stinking 
badger, a small nocturnal burrower of Java and Sumatra, 

which may eject its dreadful fluid like a skunk; 

and the large, long-snouted, piglike sand badgers 
or balisaurs of northeastern India and Assam. These two 
bring us to the true badger of Europe and eastward, — one 
of the most familiar animals of the Old World. It lives in 
the woods, is nocturnal, omnivorous, and brings forth its young 
in a deep, winding burrow permanently occupied, — three or 
four at a time, born naked and blind, after gestation lasting 
twelve or sometimes fifteen months. Four other species are 

176 



BADGERS AND BADGER BAITING 

found in Asia, one peculiar to Japan ; and extinct species are 
known as far back as Pliocene strata. 

To this animal our language owes the expressive verb "to badger"; 
that is, to harass; and it comes from a practice in which our British fore- 
fathers took great delight — badger baiting. "In order to give the better 
effect to this diversion," Strutt 196 explains, "a hole is dug in the ground for 
the retreat of the animal ; and the dogs run at him singly in succession ; for 
it is not usual, I believe, to permit any more than one of them to attack him 
at once, and the dog which approaches him with the least timidity, fastens 
upon him the most firmly, and brings him the soonest from his hole, is 
accounted the best." But in its later times — and the "sport" lasted in 




Copyright, N. Y. Zoological Society. Sunhorn, Pho*. 

The American Badger. 

country places until the beginning of the nineteenth century — the poor 
creature was no longer treated with such fairness, but was put into a barrel 
laid upon its side and attacked by an unlimited number of dogs, among 
which it was able, often, to do much execution before overcome, thanks to 
its powerful jaws and sharp teeth. Old books show that this animal was 
formerly called "grey" or "brock" (still heard provincially), and that in 
Italy and France its flesh was considered a delicacy when made into hams 
or bacon ; also that the skin when dressed with the hair on is impervious 
to rain, and was a favorite covering for trunks, while out of the hairs them- 
selves are made artists' brushes. 

Our American badger resembles the European one in appear- 

x 177 



■ THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

ance and habits, but is smaller, has different teeth, etc. When 
this country was first explored badgers were met with every- 
where in open lands from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, and 
as far north as Peace River. Wisconsin took its name, 
"Badger State," after them. Now they have disappeared 
from the prairie states, and are rare except in the high, dry 
plains, where gophers and prairie dogs remain to support them. 

The badger is truly a "beast of the field," — digging or stealing un- 
derground holes, and preying upon everything it can catch or conquer. 
American Its body is two feet long, extraordinarily low-hung and 
Badger. broad, and when it is curled up asleep, and its long fur is 

erect, it looks like a well-stuffed cushion. The legs are short and firm, and 
the large feet are furnished with long and very strong claws, making them 
powerful digging tools. The head is broad, massive, and doglike, with 
round, furry ears, a hairy muzzle, and jaws filled with formidable teeth, 
scarcely less terrible than those of the wolverine. " The whole squat, com- 
pact, large-boned, massively skulled form indicates great muscular power; 
and it is controlled by a capable brain and an indomitable spirit. . . . The 
loose fur is a ' grizzle of blackish, with white, gray, or tawny,' each hair 
having all these colors on some part of its length, and the whole blending 
handsomely." 

The badger feeds upon whatever animal food he can kill or catch that is 
not carrion — principally the ground squirrels, gophers, and field mice 
among which he lives. It is beyond his ability to chase and catch these 
nimble fellows, for the badger is slow and clumsy; but it "is the work of 
a very few minutes for this vigorous miner to so far enlarge their burrows 
that it can reach the deepest recesses." His hunting is at night. 

The entrance to its own burrow is large, and the tunnel reaches below 
the frost line, and may be almost any length. The animal changes its 
abode frequently, and constantly digs more holes than it needs, thereby 
saving a good deal of labor for coyotes, foxes, ferrets, snakes, owls, etc., 
which take possession of its abandoned intrenchments. Godman tells us 
that three or four young are born in summer, and that the period of life 
may reach fifteen years. In the United States the animal is more or less 
active all winter, being able to search out or dig out enough sleeping ground 
squirrels, marmots, etc., in spite of the frost, to satisfy its needs if not its 
appetite. Farther north, however, the greater cold and enforced famine 
induce or compel it to pass in semitorpidity the more severe months. 

178 



BADGERS AND SKUNKS 

The fullest accounts of badger life are to be found in Coues's "Fur 
Bearers," and in the works of Audubon, 90 Godman, 91 and Richardson; 183 
and a chapter in my "Wild Neighbors" contains a biography in which the 
animal's traits are described and discussed at length. 

Last of the mustelines is the skunk — an animal exclusively 
American, and covering under its name many species and a 
multitude of misdemeanors. Considering diversities skunks 
in climate and food, the habits of all are essentially 
the same. The common eastern skunk is about the size of a 
cat, but more robust, and with taller hindquarters and a 
pointed, somewhat piglike snout; this form, and the planti- 




The Common Eastern Skunk. 
179 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

grade feet, account for that mincing gait characteristic of it. 
His fur is long, thick, and glossy black, variegated with pure 
white, and is in constant demand by fur buyers, so that the ani- 
mal is incessantly trapped in all parts of the country. The white 
runs in a narrow stripe up the nose, expands behind the ears 
into a saddlelike patch on the nape of the neck, then narrows 
backward over the shoulder, and there divides, a stripe curving 
backward and downward on each side, leaving an intensely 
black, wedge-shaped tract between them, continued over the 
upper surface of the bushy tail; the under surface and tip of 
the tail are white. This description will apply in a general 
way to any of the nine species which a recent monograph 186 
of the genus Mephitis (or Chincha) enumerates in North Amer- 
ica; and all the species are extremely variable. 

The skunk is probably as numerous in most localities as ever 
it was, since its food resources are increased rather than dimin- 
ished by rural civilization, while its natural enemies are re- 
duced. Of mankind it seems perfectly fearless, and when one 
is met in the road (usually toward evening, when it begins its 
nightly wanderings) it keeps steadily on its course and the man, 
if he is wise, does not dispute as to right of way. It habitually 
digs a deep burrow for a home, but may take possession of a 
woodchuck's hole, a cave, hollow stump, or stone wall, and often 
seeks a lodging beneath a house or barn, making its presence 
known sooner or later during the winter by -a stench that com- 
pels the landlord to evict the intruder straightway. 

An annual litter of six to ten "kittens" is produced; and 
these young skunks, when taken early, have been tamed and 
enjoyed by many persons, notwithstanding, as Godman puts 
it, that "such a pet requires very cautious management." No 
one has had so much experience, or has so well recorded it, 
in this direction, as Dr. Merriam, who declares that as pets 
skunks are attractive in appearance, gentle, cleanly, playful, 
and sometimes really affectionate. 

1 80 



GOOD DONE BY SKUNKS 

The staple food of skunks in summer is insects, mainly beetles, grass- 
hoppers, and the like. The number of insects a single one will destroy is 
enormous, and mice are also pursued with avidity and success. The pro- 
digious harm both the insects and the mice do to crops, orchards, grass, etc., 
is expressed in appalling statistics; and the skunk is one of the most effi- 
cient aids of the harassed agriculturist, yet, because it occasionally raids 




A Little Striped Skunk or Phoby Cat. 



a poultry yard, it is killed on sight by the average farmer, whose prejudice 
is as large as his ignorance. Western skunks capture the destructive 
striped gophers and prairie spermophiles, while even rabbits are now and 
then followed and attacked. These timid animals have a habit of running 
into any sort of a hole, and frequently enter one at the other end of which 
dwells a skunk, fox, or badger, which makes short work of poor bunny, 

181 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and, I hope, is properly grateful to the providence that thus sends a meal 
home in its original package. Reptiles, also, form a share of the skunk's 
subsistence, — toads, frogs, salamanders, and serpents. 

To the skunk's power of hurling an acrid and terribly stinking 
liquor from its anal glands great attention has been paid by 
everybody. Coues 175 and Merriam 48 furnish complete technical 
information as to the matter; and in "Wild Neighbors" I 
have sketched this information in detail, and discussed the effect 
of the possession of this extraordinary " weapon" upon the 
nature and habits of the creature whose audacity seems merely 
the expression of perfect self-confidence. 

A closely allied genus (Spilogale), the little striped skunks, 
inhabits the warmer parts of the continent and contains several 
species. These are decidedly smaller than Mephitis, and instead 
of two broad white stripes have four narrow and often broken 
white stripes upon the shoulders, while the sides and rump are 
marked with transverse curving lines and irregular spots. One 
handsome species is distributed through most of our southern 
states. Finally, we have in Texas, and thence southward, the 
white-backed or hog-nosed skunks, or mapuritos of the genus 
Conepatus, which are of large size, and black, but with the whole 
back blanketed with white much like a ratel. The head is nar- 
row, the snout long and somewhat piglike, usually worn on top 
by much probing and rooting; and the tail is a short, stubby 
brush. The familiar Texan one 68 subsists mainly on large 
burrowing beetles and other noxious insects, varied by cactus 
fruits and berries. Its gland-discharge is vile and copious. 

The otters and sea otters must be separated as a subfamily 

(Lutrinae) on account of their adaptations to an aquatic life 

and diet. Their lineage is ancient, going back at 

Otters. & ' & & 

least to a Lower Miocene fossil ancestor, Potama- 
therium — a near relative of the civets of its period. Otters 
are distributed all over the world except Australasia, in about 
ten species, all very much alike. They have an elongated, 

182 



TRAITS OF THE OTTER 

flexuous body, a tail very strong and broad at the base and 
tapering roundly to the end; short, stout limbs and webbed 
feet; and a bulldog-like head, with powerful jaws, bristling 
whiskers, small black eyes, and little pointed, closable ears. 
Males will average about three and a half feet in total length 
and weigh eighteen to twenty- four pounds; females are smaller. 
As the otter lives exclusively on fish, it is rarely met with 
far from a stream or pond, and frequently disports itself in the 
sea. As much at home in the water as the fish it chases and 




Otter and Fisher. 
captures by a speed and agility superior to their own, it yet 
must bring its catch ashore to be eaten and leaves the tail as 
a memento of the meal. Unfortunately it sees no reason to 
discriminate between those fish in which the angler is interested 
— often financially — and the baser sorts; and therefore in 
Europe, or wherever trout and salmon are "preserved," the 
otter is regarded as vermin and vigorously persecuted. The 
chase of it then becomes of itself a sport of no mean kind, 
calling for the aid of specially bred hounds of great endurance 
and courage, since the otter is wily in eluding capture, must 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

be followed fearlessly into bad waters and dangerous retreats, 
and when cornered is capable of fierce and bloody resistance, 
taxing the skill and pluck of both dogs and men until dispatched 
by the thrust of a spear. Nevertheless otters have been tamed 
and taught to fish and to bring their catch ashore, or to swim 
about and drive fish into nets. This art is an old one in the 
Orient, and occasionally practiced in Europe. As pets otters 
are most amusing, being fond of romping with the dogs, and 
showing much intelligence and affection toward their masters. 
The mediaeval Catholic Church declared the animal, in view 
of its aquatic life, to be u fish," and so permitted the eating of 
its flesh on fast days; thus enabling the Carthusian monks to 
indulge in it without violating their rule of abstention from 
flesh, as readers of Izaak Walton's genial philosophy will re- 
member. 

The fur of otters is of very fine quality, dense, grayish at the 
base, and rich, shining dark brown on the surface. Its value 
is now very great, as otters are fast disappearing, though a few 
manage to exist, by nocturnal, secretive habits, even in long- 
settled countries. But the Brazilian otter, which is the largest 
and fiercest of its race, hunts wholly by day, and "works" its 
rivers in large companies. 10 

Our North- American otter, though closely similar in most re- 
spects to the European one, has certain noteworthy peculiarities, 
extensively treated by Coues 175 and other American naturalists. 
The species was originally scattered over most of the continent, 
and some still linger in every state, but trapping for them is 
unprofitable now except in the far North. Merriam says that 
in summer in the Adirondacks they live very largely on crayfish ; 
other writers mention a wide variety of food beyond fish. In 
winter they wander widely, starting on excursions which require 
them to make long overland trips through the snow from one 
frozen river or lake to another, in order to get a requisite amount 
of food. A striking characteristic of our otter is its playful- 

184 



SLIDING OF THE OTTER 



ness, so that, as Hornaday remarks, a single otter is worth 
more to a "zoo" than a score of beavers, because it is con- 
stantly amusing. For one trick it is famous — its otter 
sliding. When in winter the animal is in a hurry, sliding. 
it has a way of making a few leaps and then hurling itself 
forward on its belly over ice or snow, especially down an 
incline. But it also does this "just for fun." 

"Their favorite sport," as Godman describes this diversion, "is sliding, 
and for this purpose in winter the highest ridge of snow is selected, to the 
top of which the otters scramble, where, lying on the belly, with the fore 
feet bent backwards, they give themselves an impulse with the hind legs 
and swiftly glide head-foremost down the declivity, sometimes for the dis- 
tance of twenty yards. This sport they continue, apparently with the keen- 
est enjoyment, until fatigue or hunger induces them to desist." 

Usually the ter- 
mination of the 
slope must give 
them a long skate 
across the ice, or a 
plunge into the 
water, in order to 
be satisfactory ; but 
the sport still at- 
tracts them where 
there is no snow or 
ice at all, for Audu- 
bon describes mud 

slides on the stream banks of the southern states, and along 
the dikes of the rice fields, where slippery soil answers all 
purposes, and deeply worn troughs attest the frequency of 
the play. His account of one of their dens in the hollow base 
of a tree in a swamp is also of great interest. 

A very remarkable animal is its oceanic cousin the sea otter, 
whose skin is now by far the most costly of furs. Its home is 

185 




Tin. Sea Otter. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the North Pacific, where primitively it inhabited the Kam- 
chatkan coasts, and the islands and shores on the American 
„ ^ side south to California. At favorable places it was 

Sea Otter. . r 

in plenty, so that voyagers and traders toward the 
end of the eighteenth century gathered thousands of cloaks made 
by the Indians from its skin (less valued by them than some 
others), besides bales of fresh pelts bought for a trifling price. 
Within a few years, however, hunters had driven the exces- 
sively wary otters from all but a few remote and rocky islets in 
Bering Sea ; and such as still remain alive must be sought in the 
open ocean, since none now comes ashore, even about the deso- 
late Senaach Rocks — their last refuge as a nursery for young. 
All modern accounts of the animal are derived from the 
masterly studies of its life history made by Henry W. Elliott 188 
during his residence in the Aleutian Islands from 1872 to 1874, 
supplemented by Scammon's 189 observations at sea ; both are 
extensively reproduced by Coues. 175 

The sea otter is a truly pelagic animal, rarely ever landing farther than 
to climb upon outer rocks and reefs, amid the dash and thunder of the surf. 
An adult will measure three and a half to four feet from the nose to the tip 
of the tail, which is short and stumpy. The general form is like a beaver's, 
and the skin is far too large, apparently, for the body, lying in loose folds, 
and likely to be greatly stretched in removal. The limbs are short, the fore 
paws small and feeble, and the hind feet enlarged by great enveloping 
webs into a semblance of flippers — powerful swimming paddles. Its 
senses of smell and of hearing are surpassingly acute, and with no other 
fur bearer must the hunter — for trapping is out of the question — take 
such extraordinary precautions against alarming the game. Although 
"pups" were obtained every month of the year, and used to be brought 
ashore, the Alaskans from the first reported that they had never known 
one to be born on land, and were of the opinion that the birth was always 
when the mother was resting on a bed of floating kelp. Nowadays, cer- 
tainly, no birth occurs in any other situation ; and the whole life of the ma- 
jority of sea otters is passed in the open ocean. A single offspring is the 
rule, and its first coat is gray. "From this poor condition," says Elliott, 
"they improve as they grow older, shading darker, finer, thicker, and softer, 
and by the time they are two years old they are 'prime,' though the animal 

1 8<? 



ANCESTRY OF THE DOG TRIBE 

is not full-grown until its fourth or fifth year. The best specimens are 
deep liver-brown everywhere silvered or 'frosted' with the hoary tips of 
scattered long hairs." A fine skin is now worth in London (the central 
fur mart) S500 or more, previous to any furrier's preparation ; and some 
single pelts have sold as high as S1400. Only about 400 pelts reached 
London in 1904. 

"The sea -otter mother sleeps in the water on her back, with her young 
clasped between her fore paws. The pup cannot live without its mother. 
Their food is almost entirely composed of clams, mussels, and sea urchins, 
of which they are very fond, and which they break up by striking the shells 
together, held in each fore paw, sucking out the contents as they are frac- 
tured by these efforts. They also undoubtedly eat crabs and fish, and the 
juicy, tender fronds of kelp." 

The Dog Tribe, — Canidae 

In taking up the dogs and their kin of the family Canidae, we 
study the oldest and most central stock of the Carnivora, — 
the animals most intellectual and most closely connected with 
man. The dogs display, says Cope, superiority to all other 
families in the character of the brain: "There are four longi- 
tudinal convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres, while the other 
families have but three." But studies of the skulls of fossil 
dogs show that their brains were much inferior in organization 
to those of recent examples of the family. 

As to the origin and ancestry of the dog tribe, Cope shows the probability 

of their descent from the Miacidae, the latest and most specialized of the 

creodonts (see page 80). Cynodictis of the European Eocene, 

„, V J . . v . - . , ' Evolution, 

says \\ oodward, may not only be an ancestor of Cams, but 

would serve almost as well for a forerunner of the Mustelidae and Viverridae. 
Huxley declared m that Cynodictis not only lay in the direct ancestry of 
the Canidae, but "represents pretty closely the stock from which the branch 
of the Viverridae arose, subsequently to give rise to the Felidae and Hyae- 
nidae." The most conspicuous feature connecting all these animals whose 
ancestry is so commingled is the bulbous, bladderlike inflation of that 
part of the skull (auditory bulla) which on each side contains the inter- 
nal apparatus of the ear, and acts as a resonant sounding-board, increas- 
ing greatly the hearing power. This apparatus and sense are perfected in 
this family; and there is good reason to believe that the Carnivora as a 

187 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

group have sprung from a common source. Notable among Miocene fossil 
genera is Amphicyon, whose remains are found in North America as well 
as in Europe, varying from the size of a kit fox to that of a grizzly, and it 
may be termed a " bear-dog." At the same period there abounded on both 
continents the genus Galecynus, containing many generalized species, all 
of moderate size and a foxlike aspect. This type prevailed throughout 
the Miocene epoch, and then gradually gave place to descendants which 
in their central line seem to have developed into true dogs (Canis), al- 
though Galecynus also gave rise to a series of larger and different animals 
(as, in North America Temnocyon, Enhydrocyon, and Hyaenocyon of the 
Miocene rocks), most of which presently became extinct. The genus Canis 
seems to have been developed from Galecynus, which disappeared at the 
close of the Miocene, since which Canis has persisted and spread to all 
parts of the world. In its early history the family branched into many 
forms, experimentally, as it were, most of which died out within the Ter- 
tiary period. Among these side lines is one represented by the early Mio- 
cene genus, Oligobunis, — a powerful predatory beast from which, it is 
believed, has descended the South American bush dog (Icticyon) ; another 
branch gave rise to the ^Elurodon of the later Miocene formations of our 
plains, whose teeth and jaws show it to have been a big, muscular animal 
with the bone-crushing, scavenging habits of a hyena. The dominant type, 
however, proved to be that leading to the dogs, Canis; and the process 
of development has been in perfecting their running and biting powers. 
They have become better hunters by lengthening the legs, reducing and 
strengthening the toes, which in the early bear-dogs were partly or 
wholly plantigrade, and by the lengthening of the jaws and coincident 
reduction in number and increase in size and sharpness of the teeth ; along 
with this has gone an enlargement of the skull and a development of the 
brain beyond that of any other kind of carnivore. 

Our friends the dogs should lead the list by right of their 
advancement, but it will be better first to examine some of their 
wild prototypes, especially the wolves, the most typical and 
powerful of the canine race. , 

The great gray wolf, still more or less prevalent throughout 

almost the whole northern hemisphere, measures in 

its largest subarctic form about three and a half 

feet long, exclusive of the somewhat bushy tail, which hangs 

to the hocks, and weighs one hundred and fifty pounds or there- 

188 



HABITS OF WOLVES 

about. This northern wolf has an under fur of slate-gray not 
found in southerly examples, and is typically of a rufous or 
yellowish gray above, more or less grizzled, while the under 
parts are whitish, and the tail is often tipped with black. These 
hues are paler in northern than in southern specimens, and 
the latter are also inclined to be smaller ; in many warm regions 
totally black races are known, and the black wolf of Florida 
is considered by Merriam a distinct species; as also are the 
great pure white wolf of our Arctic coast and the wolf of 
Japan. In general the animal is a creature of wooded 
mountains, — a " timber" wolf. 

In summer a pair will retire to some cavern or convenient 
shelter, often dug by the mother herself, and there six to ten 
whelps are born, but usually only two or three survive to full 
age. At this season small game is numerous everywhere, 
and the animals, wandering about alone by day as well as by 
night, pick up a good living with little trouble, and grow fat, 
indolent, and cowardly, or at any rate peaceful. As the summer 
closes and the whelps grow the parents take them out with them 
and show them what is good to eat and how to hunt for it. With 
the onset of winter times become harder, the small creatures 
disappear, and then the wolves must arouse their strength and 
intelligence to outwit and overcome the larger animals, — the 
wild cattle, deer, antelopes, and the like upon which they prey. 

The peaceable disposition of summer changes as the snow 
fills the forests, the cold gales moan through the trees, and 
the long, dark nights enshroud an almost dead world, into hungry 
ferocity and a force of craft and caution born of the direst need, 
breeding a daring which at last makes the animal formidable 
to man himself. Much exaggeration has crept into the popular 
history of wolves, from the superstitious tales of old, which fill 
so many pages of Gubernatis's 208 curious books, to the stirring 
romances of "Wolf" Seton; but basis enough remains to make 
it certain that travelers through the wintry wilderness of Canada 

189 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

or Russia have more than once been attacked, pulled down, and 
killed by these beasts, whose boldness, endurance, and persist- 
ence in pursuit when crazed by famine, are almost boundless. 
Nevertheless more persons have been scared than hurt; and 
that mainly by the terrific howling which multiplies itself by its 
rapid, echoing volume, until it seems as though a dozen wolves 
were clamoring in concert. 




Great Gray or Timber Wolf. 



It is in winter, mainly, when the larger animals must be 
depended upon, that the wolves form themselves into "packs" 
Hunting an d assist one another. To this class of animals 
in Packs. hunting is truly "the chase," for their method is, 
having found their quarry (in which the good nose for a trail and 
the keen hearing assist them), to keep it in sight and run it 
down. The endurance of their gallop is astonishing, yet most 
deer, antelopes, and horses can outspeed and outswim them, and 
would usually escape a single wolf. Therefore two, or some- 
times many, unite, and by relieving one another, cutting across 

190 



DEPREDATIONS BY WOLVES 

corners, surrounding a pond in which some fleeing victim has 
sought safety, or otherwise acting in concert, will exhaust and 
pull down an animal large enough to furnish a meal for all — 
if the later ones are not too slow in arriving ! A band of arctic 
wolves will depopulate a district of reindeer in one winter; 
only the polar bear and the musk ox can hold their own against 
them. Very pretty tactics are often employed, especially by 
coyotes, whose work must be doubly strategic because done 
in the open. Plainsmen still call a particularly big old gray 
wolf a "buffalo runner," recalling the time when the principal 
prey of those of the West was the bison. "The wolves seldom 
molested the buffaloes unless they were disabled by wounds or 
sickness. The young calves were what they were after when 
they skulked through the herd, dodging the old bulls and angry 
cow buffaloes in the tall bunch grass of the plains." 

Dwellers on the frontier, or in thinly settled and mountainous 
districts, suffer much from the depredations of the bigger wolves, 
which maim more than they kill and eat, when famine, or the 
lesson learned from some previous success, leads them to attack 
domestic animals. This destructiveness, and the value of their 
pelts, have led to their extermination throughout the more thickly 
settled parts of both the United States and Canada, and even 
in the far West they have become scarce since the disappearance 
of bison, elk, and blacktail. A black variety still haunts the 
recesses of the Florida everglades. In the ranching districts, 
however, cattle and sheep keep many bands alive wherever 
there are rocky fastnesses to which they may retire, in spite of 
the traps, poisons, and guns which they understand so much 
better than did their forefathers ; but they are not as adaptable, 
clever, and safe as the coyotes. In Europe, as we learn from 
Harting, 109 Aflalo, 101 and other authorities, thev still . . , 

. , . Historical. 

persist on the continent even in France and Spain, 
wherever a rough country gives them harbor, whence they may 
race forth on winter nights to ravage the farms and pastures ; 

191 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and official returns show that more than half a million head 
of cattle and smaller live stock are annually destroyed by 
wolves in European Russia alone. 

"In Saxon times wolves were very abundant [in Great Britain]; and 
even so recently as the reign of Elizabeth they were to be seen on Dart- 
moor and in the Forest of Dean. In the New Forest they were hunted in 
the twelfth century. It would seem that the last English wolf was slain 
some time during the reign of Henry VII. In Scotland, however, they 
persisted very much longer. So recently as 1743 was the last killed. But 
before this period they had begun to get exceedingly scarce, for the price 
of a skin in 1620 is quoted at £6: 13: 4. In Ireland wolves lingered yet 
longer; about 1770 is believed to be the date of their final extinction in 
that island. . . . Much legend has collected around this fierce carnivore. 
Aristotle, usually accurate in the main, still states more of wolves than ex- 
perience warrants." Pliny, unable to sift truth from falsehood, was in this 
matter "an eager listener to all old women's tales." ^lian added to his 
marvels and asserted that the wolf cannot bend its head back; if it should 
happen to tread on the flower of the squill it at once becomes torpid. So 
the wily fox, fearing his more powerful enemy, takes care to strew his path 
with squills. The conversion of men into wolves was a well-known super- 
stition, dating from Grecian and Roman times; it formed the basis of much 
of the witchcraft persecutions of the Middle Ages and onward, and has 
left its mark in folk-lore, e.g. the Wolf in "Red Riding Hood." 37,208 

Of our western coyote, red, barking, or prairie wolf, one 
might write a long chapter, but its biography is easily accessible 
in many books; and I myself have written it at 
length in my "Wild Neighbors," under the caption 
"The Hound of the Plains." Formerly this wolf (or wolves, 
for the old Cams latrans has latterly been divided 98 into a 
dozen or more species) was to be found from the Ohio prairies 
west to the Pacific, and from Great Slave Lake to Guatemala; 
but now none is seen east of the dry Plains, where it continues 
to maintain itself because its natural enemies have been killed 
off, and because it is extremely clever in raiding the farmers' 
poultry yards, pigsties, and lamb-folds ; in fact, in some regions 
it interferes seriously with ranching industries — far more so 

192 



SOUTH AMF.RICAX WOLVES 



than does the timber wolf. On the other hand it does good 
service by its ceaseless destruction of rabbits, prairie dogs, and 
similar pests, as has been well shown by Lantz. 193 No livelier 




A Family of Coyotes. 
From a photograph of a mounted group in the National Museum. 

account of coyote hunting exists than that written by President 
Roosevelt of his sport in 1905. 128 

South America has certain other wolves and "fox dogs" 
not very well known. The most remarkable one, perhaps, is 
the maned or red wolf of the forests north of the 
Pampas, which is about the size of the common 
wolf, but not so heavy, its height being due to its long, ungainly 
legs, which give it a stilted appearance. In the Falkland 
Islands there formerly dwelt an isolated, burrowing, coyotelike 
"antarctic" wolf, long ago exterminated. The fox dogs proper 
form a group of small canine animals, five species of which are 
recognized by Mivart. 192 They are much alike in their foxy 
appearance, though rather larger in size than a fox, and more 
o 193 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

variegated. The crab-eating fox dog is common throughout 
the forested parts of the whole Amazon basin, and gets its 
name from its fondness for crayfish ; it often collects in packs 
and runs down deer. Azara's dog, or the colpeo, is known 
throughout the whole continent east of the Andes, and has been 
well described by Azara, 131 Hudson, 35 and others. It has much 
the habits of coyotes, but takes more rapidly to life in forests. 
Everywhere it is foxlike in its fondness for poultry, and in 
Paraguay destroys a great amount of sugar cane, while eating 
but a little. 

In the small reddish variety of wolf native to India 19 we have 

a form which seems to bridge the narrow gap between wolves 

and jackals, — the latter, small, active, noisv, wolf- 

Jackals. .... . ' 

like animals inhabiting Africa and southern Asia. 
Many kinds of jackals are known — none better than those of 
Egypt and Syria, especially Canis lupaster, upon which Ander- 
son furnishes the following notes : — 

"They live in the desert surrounding cultivated land, and descend from 
the gullies and hills at sunset, making their way into the palm-groves and 
gardens, where they often make night hideous with their howls. At 
Dakhel they appear to live chiefly on fruit, which is plentiful, and consists 
of dates, mulberries, apricots, etc., at different seasons. In the north of 
the Fayum the jackals . . . live entirely on fish. . . . Unlike the hyena, they 
often congregate together at night near one's tent, and keep up an infernal 
din for hours; their cry is usually a long howl broken into a number of 
yelping notes at the end. Like hyenas, the jackals do not penetrate any 
distance into the desert." 

In South Africa the red jackal and the side-striped jackal 
are prevalent, and do much damage to sheep, poultry, etc., 
and like our coyote are successfully kept out by wire fences, 
which they will not jump. The well-known Abyssinian black- 
backed species 23 has similar traits ; and that country has also 
a rarer and very interesting wolflike jackal called the kaberu. 
The most familiar of the Asiatic jackals is the common pale 

194 



JACKALS AND THE DINGO 

yellowish or "golden" one, traceable in a great variety of color 
disguises from Greece to Ceylon and northern Burma, in all 
sorts of country and even within the confines of large cities. 
More than others, the Indian jackal associates in packs, which 
use most effectively their native craft to drive from its covert, 
and in the precise direction they wish, any luckless axis, black- 
buck, or similar game, upon which they fix their attention; 
meanwhile one or more jackals have crept far ahead, and lie 
ready to spring upon the wearied and badgered quarry the 
moment the maneuvering pack has driven it within reach. 194 

"In the towns and villages of India the jackals act as efficient scaven- 
gers. Occasionally they take to killing poultry or lambs or kids; and 
Jerdon states that weakly goats and sheep often become their prey, while 
wounded antelopes are tracked down and killed. Among vegetable foods 
the chief seems to be the so-called ber fruit; but Professor Ball reports 
that in certain districts jackals do enormous damage to the sugar planta- 
tions, biting ten or a dozen canes for one they eat. Like the civet cat in 
Java, jackals in the Wynaad district of Madras feed on the ripe fruit of 
the coffee plant." 

With the jackals we come to the end of the great genus Canis, 
but there remain in the "thooid" section of the family several 




Dingo. 



other animals which demand mention, such as the queer little 
raccoon dog of China ; the dingo 20 ' 261 of Australia, which there 
both runs wild and is kept as a pet among the blackfellows, by 

i9S 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Hyena Dog. 



whose ancestors it was probably introduced thousands of years 
ago; the long- bodied, short-legged, primitive bush dog of 
Guiana; the still more primitive and fenneclike Lalande's 
dog, or "bakoor jackal" 191 (Otocyon) of the South 
African deserts; and the African and East Indian 
hunting dogs. The hunting dog or hyena dog of Africa differs 
from the type in having only four toes on any foot and by its 
dental formula, — p. f , m. f ; and it so resembles a hyena in 

general appear- 
ance that at 'first 
it was classified 
in that family. 
It ranges the 
country in swift- 
footed packs 
dreaded by every 
creature both of 
the forest and the 
veldt, and every 
writer adds to 
their evil reputa- 
tion for both strategy and ferocity. Selous relates that he has 
seen a herd of buffaloes put to flight by them ; and the negroes 
say the lion himself fears these brutes. H. A. Bryden thus 
describes their method of attack : — 

"A pack of European hounds press their game steadily until it is run 
to a standstill, and overwhelm it in a body. But the 'wild honde' hunts 
quite differently. Each of the fleetest hounds in turn, or as it gets a chance, 
races up to the game and tears with its teeth at some portion of the hinder 
parts ; the flanks and under parts and the hock tendons are favorite places. 
By this method the unfortunate antelope is finally overcome. As its paces 
become shorter and more feeble, the attacks grow fiercer and more deadly, 
and finally, maimed, hamstrung, and partially disemboweled, the quarry 
is pulled down and devoured." 

This animal has been such a nuisance to both settlers and sportsmen 

196 




Copyright, N. Y. Zuol. Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

African Hyena or Hunting Dog. 



ASIATIC WILD BOGS 

that it has been killed at every chance, and is now uncommon. A century 
ago it ranged even into Egypt; and it is the party-colored, prick-eared dog 
represented in the ancient mural paintings at Beni Hasan and elsewhere. 

The Asiatic wild dogs form the genus Cyon, peculiar in having 
only two molars in the lower jaw, and otherwise. It contains 
two or three species, one of which is Siberian, and closely re- 
sembles a small Eskimo sledge dog, except that its bushy tail 
does not curl. With its long, thick hair forming a real mane 
around its neck and face, foxy red in summer and yellowish 
white in winter, and its compact, robust body and short muzzle, 
this is among the most doglike of all its w r ild tribe. It is most 
common in forested mountain ranges and hunts in packs, 
chiefly after deer. At the other extreme is the wild dog of the 
Malay Archipelago, which is thinly haired and gaunt, as be- 
comes a native of those hot islands. More widely known than 
either of these, however, is the wild dog of India, called "dhole" 
in the South and "buansuah" in the North. Like the others it 
is normally rusty red in color and makes its lair in rocky jungle, 
whence, more often by day than by night, it makes its forays, 
sometimes alone, but usually in a pack from which even the 
tiger and leopard flee. Doubtless they have good reason to 
fear such an unequal combat, as have big cats in other countries ; 
and herein lies the root of the deeply planted antipathy between 
the two races, and the explanation of the ease with which a few 
curs will "tree" a jaguar or make a lion turn tail. According 
to Blanford 19 these dogs avoid the neighborhood of man, and 
consequently rarely attack domestic animals; "occasionally, 
however, they kill sheep, goats, and cattle, and Jerdon mentions 
one instance, and M 'Master another, of their pulling down a 
tame buffalo." They worry their quarry to death exactly as 
does the hyena dog. 

I have now passed in review all the kinds of canine animals 
from which our domestic dogs might have been derived ; for it 
is certain that foxes have had little if any part in their formation. 

197 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

It is probable that the dog was the first, as it is the most 
universal, of domesticated animals. I believe that, almost from 
his beginning, man made a companion of something 
Domestic of the kind: perhaps, however, it would be nearer 
truth to say that the dog made a companion of him, 
for a striking characteristic of this fine animal is that he 
attaches himself voluntarily to mankind. This disposition 
has, no doubt, been greatly intensified by centuries of do- 
mestic associations, yet such a tendency must have been in- 
herent in the stock. Wolves are far less likely to attack 
human beings than are any other Carnivora; their whelps 
are the easiest of all to tame; and the wildest dogs stay 
about the camps of their owner, or follow him in his wan- 
derings, though their reward be scant in prosperity, and in 
adversity their confidence is betrayed in order to provide him 
with a meal. 

The origin of our house dogs has been the theme of copious 

speculation. Their world-wide 
presence — for, excepting in the 
South Sea Islands, the natives 
of every part of the globe have 
possessed them from time im- 
memorial ; their extraordinary 
diversity — more than two hun- 
c.Lown,Phot. dred well -recognized breeds, 
-waggles," the author's fox besides countless mongrels — 

Terrier. and the fact that this diver- 

Type of Short-haired Dogs, sity seems to go back beyond 

the utmost horizon of history; 
the unlikeness of most modern dogs to any existing wild 
canine animal — all have been difficulties in solving the prob- 
lem. An examination of skulls and teeth, such as was made 
by Windle, 195 shows that we may leave out of account in 
reconstructing their pedigree everything outside of the genus 

198 




ORIGIN OF THE DOMESTIC DOG 

Canis. Still further clearance may be made by setting aside 
dogs that we know to be simply tamed examples of local 
wild species. Such were the original arctic sledge dogs, 
— half-tamed gray wolves, — and the stock was constantly 
kept up to the mark by crossing with wild wolves. Simi- 
larly, the dogs found with the Indians of our Northwest 
were tamed coyotes ; those of India — as remains apparent 
in the Oriental pariahs — are descended from captured East 
Indian wolves; those of the African negroes from one or 
another local jackal; those of the South American Indi- 
ans from the maned wolf or one of the fox dogs; and other 
cases might be added. Everywhere it is reported that although 
suspicious and snappish toward strangers these tamed wolves, 
jackals, etc., were closely attached to their owners, in spite of 
the neglect and abuse with which they were usually treated. 
Experience gained in zoological gardens shows that the 
young of all kinds of wild canids respond eagerly to any 
friendly advances we may make. This must always have been 
so ; and I have no doubt, as has been said, that from the be- 
ginning of his history man in all parts of the world made 
friends with some canine animal of his neighborhood, includ- 
ing, very likely, kinds which became extinct long ago, leaving 
as their traces features and traits in our dogs which otherwise 
we find it hard to explain. 244 These early camp dogs would 
become modified by interbreeding and by the influences of cap- 
tivity; and as their vagabondish owners wandered about would 
be crossed not only with divers sorts of tamed dogs, but with 
the wild stocks of new countries ; and this complication would 
increase as civilization extended. The dog as we know it, then, 
appears to be a composite from many lines of canine ancestors, 
and his present existence and variety are due to the unusual 
capability in this race for hybridity; while his natural ability 
to learn may and should be developed far beyond present 
attainments. 

199 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Though we are accustomed to think of the dog of primitive man as an 
aid and companion in his hunting, it is doubtful whether it was of much 
Dogs of rea l value in that way. It might help in running down a 

Early Man. ^eer or overcoming a boar, but the everyday hunting of a 
man armed only with bow and spear must be by cautious methods of stalk- 
ing his game, and here a dog would be likely to do more harm than good. 
It is only since the invention of firearms that hunting with dogs has become 




The Setter, — a Highly Developed Type of Hunting Dog. 



general, and the pointers and retrievers of our time are of very recent ori- 
gin. The earliest men no doubt valued their dogs principally as a reserve 
food supply; and secondarily, taking advantage of that sense of proprietor- 
ship innate in the animal, because they were useful in protecting the camp 
against inroads of wild beasts or forays by human marauders. Man, and 
especially a weary savage, is a heavy sleeper, so that it was well to have a 
friend in camp who slept as lightly as does the dog. And when the depth 
of winter or other occasion of want and perhaps famine arrived, and it be- 
gan to be needful to sacrifice their guardians for food, the first to go would 
be the ones least helpful and cared for. A dog whose gentler nature had 
made it the pet of the children would be hidden and shielded by them when 
the father's stone ax was lifted; and, turning toward others of the pack, 
he would strike down last of all that animal which had courageously be- 
friended him in some encounter with a bear, or which was the keenest of 



DOGS OF PREHISTORIC MEN 

the crew in scenting and announcing danger. Savages, though rude and 
thriftless, are not fools in such matters, so that an accidental, yet effective, 
selection of the better dogs along various lines must have begun almost at 
the first. Thus certain varieties would be developed and maintained with 
more or less distinctness and permanence during the rude stage when all 
men were nomadic hunters, and when there would be no other domestic 
animal. Evidence of the truth of this supposition is at hand. Remains 
of dogs are mfngled with human relics of the earliest Stone Age, and in the 
later Polished-stone period, represented by the Swiss lake dwellers. As to 
the origin of the two hundred or more specialized domestic breeds of the 
present time, some of which are quite modern while others date back thou- 
sands of years, little can be said with confidence. One of the latest dis- 
coveries is of the remains of a distinct canine species, allied to the dingo, 
which was domesticated in what is now Russia by men of Neolithic time, 
and perhaps contributed to existing varieties. 

"In the Roman period not only were sight hounds and scent hounds 
fully differentiated, but there were also various kinds of lap dogs and house 
dogs, although none quite like our modern breeds. Even as far back as 
about 3000 B.C., Egyptian frescoes show not only greyhound-like breeds, 
but one with drooping ears like a hound, and a third which* has been com- 
pared to the modern turnspit ; while house dogs and lap dogs came in soon 
afterward. Whether any of these are the direct ancestors of modern 
breeds, or whether all such have been produced by subsequent crossing, 
is a very difficult question to answer." 65 

The foxes so differ from the wolfish branch of the Canidae 
in anatomy, especially of the skull, that Huxley made them a 
distinct group under the title "alopecoid"; but 
paleontology now shows a closer connection between 
the two than he knew of. Some zoologists, as Mivart, 197 set 
them aside in a genus Vulpes, or even separate them into several 
genera, but with Beddard we may include them in Canis. The 
type is that of a smaller, more agile and delicate animal than a 
wolf or jackal, with a broader skull and sharper muzzle, larger 
ears, a longer, more bushy tail, and usually longer fur. Weaker 
than its wolfish relatives, though endowed with great swiftness, 
and used to playing the double role of hunter and hunted (for 
foxes are regularly chased by wolves and big cats), its brain has 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

been developed to a high degree to make up for its bodily de- 
ficiencies, and shows capacity for further development; yet, 
says Beddard, "the sagacity of the fox appears to be a little 
more proverbial than actual," and certainly is far more apparent 
in populous countries than in a wilderness. This fact is of 
itself, however, a tribute to the animal's intelligence as betoken- 
ing a quality of mind above mere native half-instinctive knowl- 
edge, for some kinds of foxes display notable quickness in meet- 
ing the new problems presented by the clearing and cultivation 
of the wilderness, and the rising of man, with his guns, traps, 
and poisons, to the rank of chief enemy, — an entirely novel 
state of things. 

The literature of fox hunting in Great Britain teems with illustrations 
of the animal's wiles in "saving its brush" in the face of the persecution 
to which for two hundred years or more it has been exposed 
by that sport, and many of the incidents recorded are truly 
remarkable; yet undoubtedly the British fox would long ago have been 
exterminated were it not regularly bred and "preserved" there. In other 
countries, however, where little or no help is given by either law or public 
opinion, the animal holds its own among men by its quickness in "catching 
on," and by its cautious, keen study of each new thing it encounters. Man 
may be sure he has never studied Reynard so closely as Reynard has studied 
him! Even here, nevertheless, exaggerations and misstatements have 
crept in, else we must believe that the foxes had grown so wise long ago 
that the supply of their pelts must have ceased ; at least so exalted a view 
of their ability as that, for example, in Seton's 198 "Springfield Fox" must 
be rejected, like much else in that author's fascinating but uncritical writ- 
ings. The fact remains, all the same, that foxes generally are notably 
clever and quick-witted; and that they often, but not always, show aston- 
ishing skill and appreciation in coping by new and improved strategy with 
some entirely novel situation, where life will be the forfeit paid for a 
blunder. 

The typical species — the fox of ordinary speech — is the red 
fox. Inhabiting the whole northern hemisphere, it varies im- 
mensely in both size and color, and has been given many local 

202 



VARIETIES OE THE RED FOX 

specific names; but it is probable that the ''common red fox" 
of Europe, Africa, Asia (south to and including the Hima- 
layas), of Japan, and of all North America, form only American 
one ancient and diversified species, whose ancestors e ox * 
were of a circumpolar stock. Our American form seems 
especially variable, since its typical yellowish red, darkest on 
the back and shoulders, may be very bright or very pale; or 
may have the markings on the spine and withers very dark and 
distinct, making it a "cross fox," or be totally black with a 
white-tipped tail; or black with the tips of most of the hairs 
white, giving the fur a frosted or "silver" appearance. Such 
extreme variations are rare, and, making the pelt very hand- 
some, are highly prized by furriers; but they may occur in 
the same fitter with normally reddish ones. It must also be 
remembered that a good many English red foxes have been 
imported and turned loose in the eastern United States, par- 
ticularly in Maryland, to increase the supply for the sport of 
fox hunting, and also in response to a popular idea that the 
British fox, as a result of inherited experience, knows how to 
play his end of the game better than does his American cousin. 
This sport has been practiced after the British fashion in the 
Middle South since Colonial times, and has produced a special 
American strain of fox hounds. 

Foxes everywhere are naturally burrowers and nocturnal 
hunters of ground-nesting birds from ducks and geese to spar- 
rows, and of their eggs; rodents of every sort, frogs, lizards, 
insects, and in summer and autumn fruit and berries. Some 
of the prey is got by running it down, for the fox is fleet ; some 
by digging it out of its underground holes; some by stalking 
it with crafty caution; some by lying apparently dead until 
the victim approaches near enough to be seized by a catlike 
pounce. These are the essential tactics of its food getting 
in all lands, the fare and the method varying with the coun- 
try; and endless stratagems match the native precautions of 

203 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the small quarry. All the larger cats and wolves are its 
enemies in the wilderness, and the skill in avoiding them 
inherited from innumerable ancestors serves it well when in 
civilized lands the fox finds troops of dogs set upon its 
track. 

Standard works are supplemented by admirable essays on the 
American fox by Thoreau, Burroughs, Lottridge, Robinson, 
and others who know him well; none is more complete and 
intimate than the history given by Mr. Cram, 52 '' 100 who asserts 
that in New England, at least, the foxes in cultivated districts 
are far more highly developed in intellect than are those of the 
outlying parts, or than were the foxes of a century ago. They 
are the most bold, skillful, and inveterate of poultry thieves, 
and will sometimes take as many as " thirty pullets in a single 
night" ; and often half or more of the booty of such a raid will 
be found in a pile in some hiding place, which goes to show that 
the foxes of all cold regions probably store surplus food. In 
return for levying upon his chickens (or, in Europe, upon the 
pheasants and other treasures of the gamekeeper) the animal 
aids the farmer by destroying numberless rats, mice, gophers, 
and similar pests. 

There is in California another species of fox, — the big-eared ; and 
Alaska is said to have two more, but we know little about them. On the 
Plains scampers the kit fox, now becoming rare, which is only two thirds 
the size of the red fox, though nearly as tall, and frosted red buff in color. 
It frequents the prairie-dog towns, feeds largely on these and associated 
rodents and birds ; is an expert burrower, and very alert and wary, to which 
it owes its safety rather than to its reputed excessive swiftness. 

Very different from any of the foregoing is the gray fox, now 
altogether a denizen of Dixie, having disappeared 
from most of the North where the red fox holds its 
own so well. This seems to be the result mainly of a com- 
petition in brains, the gray fox not having the quick-witted 

204 







205 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

adaptability and fearlessness of the red ; but it is due in part to 
the gray's less strength and fecundity, its young rarely exceed- 
ing four or five annually, whereas the litter of the red often 
numbers seven or eight. Otherwise the gray fox seems to 
have several advantages. It is decidedly smaller and less con- 
spicuous, being silver-gray, darker on the back, and tinged with 




Copyright, N. V. Zi.ologicul Society. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



A Group of Gray Foxes. 



rufous on the ears, sides of the neck, breast, and under parts, 
while the tips of the ears, top of the nose, chin, and feet are 
black. It is a woodlander, and seems incapable of adapting 
itself to the cleared districts in which the red fox so easily 
makes itself at home; climbs trees almost like a cat, and takes to 
them naturally for safety or to get grapes and persimmons to eat. 
There, too, it makes its home in a hollow stump or log, not digging 
a burrow, for the weather of its southerly habitat, and the later 
date of its breeding, do not require for its young the warmth of 
an underground nursery; and all the year round it can supply 

206 



GRAY AND ARCTIC FOXES 

itself with food by its own cunning tricks, while the red fox 
must wander over many miles of country. The ground-breed- 
ing game birds and waterfowl and their eggs form its principal 
fare, perhaps, in summer, when hens or turkeys straying in the 
woods are likely to be seized ; but rarely is the poultry disturbed 
on the home roost, nor can such worse depredations as killing 
young pigs, lambs, etc., be laid at its door. Audubon, whose 
account of this to him very familiar animal is circumstantial, 
speaks of it as a " pilfering thief" and of the red fox as a "daring 
and cunning plunderer." Gray foxes will run before hounds 
only a short distance, doubling constantly and for a short time, 
when they either "hole" in a tree or climb one; while a red 
fox may run straight eight or ten miles away and then back in 
a parallel course. 

Extremely interesting is the arctic fox, of the polar regions 
right round the world. It is a shy, swift little beast with blunt 
nose, short rounded ears, a very long bushy tail, ^cMc or 
and the soles of its feet well shod with moccasins Blue Foxes - 
of hair, giving them a firm hold on the slippery rocks, snow, 
and ice, over which it leaves its tiny tracks from Labrador to 
the Lincoln Sea. Every arctic explorer from Steller 203 down 
has had much to say of this animal, the accounts given by 
Richardson, 183 Feilden, 202 and Nelson 201 being especially full 
and good. The most remarkable feature of its history relates 
to its varying phases of coloration. During the short arctic 
summer its dress is brown with the under parts lighter, often 
drab. In autumn this coat is replaced by one of pure white, 
beneath which is a fine wool; and this warm, white dress, 
invisible against the snow, is the normal winter hue of the 
great majority of arctic foxes. A small proportion, however, 
are never either white or dark brown, but are slate-gray all the 
year round. This double phase may occur anywhere, one or 
two, perhaps, arising from a litter that becomes white; but in 
some rather southerly places the "blues" prevail, forming a 

207 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

local race. Such is the case in Greenland, Iceland, and in 
the Aleutian Islands, where blue foxes are now carefully 
preserved and cared for in a semidomestic condition, for the 
sake of their highly valuable fur, a certain number being killed 
annually. 

In Alaska these foxes occur everywhere, but prefer rocky ledges, or the 
precipitous seacoast, where they can find snug shelters. Nelson's party, 
scaling the unvisited cliffs of Herald Island, found them in prosperous 
possession. Their burrows pitted the hills, each bedded with moss; and 
the animals sat about squeaking surprise rather than protest at the in- 
truders. "During summer they fare sumptuously upon the breeding 
waterfowl, eggs, and young birds, which are found everywhere; but in 
winter comes harder work, and the ground is more carefully searched for 
stray mice, lemmings, or an occasional ptarmigan. In early spring, toward 
the end of March, when the seals begin to haul up on the ice and the first 
young are born, thousands of these foxes go out seaward and live upon 
the ice the rest of the season. The young seal's offal left by hunters and 
from other sources gives them more food than the shore affords at this 
time. ... In fall a dead whale or other large sea animal cast ashore 
forms a general feast for all the foxes and ravens from the country round 
till its bones are polished. . . . The young of this species are born in 
May and June. . . . The young are covered with a dingy or smoky 
plumbeous fur all summer until the last of September or first of October, 
when the white winter fur begins to appear. In spring the fur gets worn 
and is harsh and worthless by the middle of April ; it becomes prime again 
about the end of October." 

For the most northern adventurers, which spend the winter on Spitz - 
bergen, or even some more remote arctic island, no food whatever save an 
accidental find of sea-carrion is available during the dark half of the year; 
and so they have learned to lay away stores of food. While the brief 
summer lasts, these foxes are ceaselessly occupied in feeding on birds, 
eggs, and lemmings, and grow replete with fatness. As cold weather 
approaches they kill lemmings industriously and pack their bodies away 
in rock crevices and in caches beneath the snow, where they freeze and 
are drawn upon from day to day. The foxes of southern Alaska and other 
southerly regions do not seem to store such supplies, and are often driven 
by famine to enter native villages and encampments in search of scraps, 
and so fall victims to the dogs. 

208 




FENNKC; UK. DESERT FOX 




EAST AFRICAN JA< KAL 



SMALL DESERT FOXES 

Several other foxes inhabit the Old World, but none calls 
for particular mention. The arid highlands of southwestern 
Asia have two or three small, pale, mice-catching species, of 
which the best known is the corsac. Another small and pretty 
kind of fox is common throughout India, and, since it runs 
freely and doubles like a hare, affords some sport by coursing 
it with an inferior breed of srrevhounds, for first-rate 

•11 Fennec. 

hounds would overtake it too quickly to make the chase 
interesting. More attractive, however, are the exquisite little 
fennec foxes, four species of which dwell in the African deserts. 
The one best known, the fennec proper of the Sahara and 
eastward, is the smallest of the Canidae, the head and body 
measuring only fifteen or sixteen inches, and the tail six and 
three-fourths inches, while the sharp-nosed, big-eyed, "cute" 
little face is surmounted by immense ears, each larger than the 
whole countenance. These great ears are associated, as is the 
general rule, with the excessive inflation of the "bulla," or ear 
cavity, which gives such peculiar and picturesque breadth to a 
fox's face ; and both structures indicate extraordinary powers of 
hearing. The general cream-color of the fur harmonizes the 
animal protectively with the sands, but the throat, cheeks, eye- 
lids, and furry borders of the tall, pointed ears are pure white. 
These delicate and gracefully pretty little creatures are true 
desert dwellers, existing in the sandiest wastes as well as about 
the oases, and making deep burrows, sometimes in large colo- 
nies, and dug with amazing quickness, in which they spend the 
heat of the day, and whence they steal forth at night to hunt in 
packs after the jerboas, spiny mice, lizards, and other small prey 
upon which they subsist. "The inside of the burrow is lined 
with feathers, hair, and soft vegetable substances, and is re- 
markable for its cleanliness." They seem capable of going 
long periods without water, yet drink eagerly when they find 
a pool. All feed much in the proper season on dates and 
other fruit; and it is quite possible that the poet of the "Song 
p 209 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

of Solomon" had it in mind when he sang of " the foxes, the 
little foxes that spoil the vines." 

None of this fox group seems to have had any part in the 
composition of the domestic dog. Foxes do not tame well, 
nor are they likely, or apparently able, to cross with dogs, for 
none of the few alleged instances of hybrids seems trustworthy. 
On the contrary, various wolves and jackals not only may 
cross in their wild state, but all produce fertile offspring when 
mated with any race of domestic dogs. 

Bears, Raccoons, and Coon-Bears 

In tracing the ancestry of the Canidae, mention was made of 
the Miocene fossil genus Amphicyon as combining with canine 
features those later to become characteristic of the bear family 
(Ursidae). This genus and related forms, such as Hemicyon, 
and Hyaenarctus, so completely fill the gap, structurally speak- 
ing, between modern bears and dogs, that it is plain that the 
ursine line developed from among them. 

One of the more prominent of the later ancestors was Arctotherium, — 
the genus of the arctotheres, — which seems to have originated in southern 
South America, where it was a contemporary of the saber-toothed tiger, 
megatherium, and those other huge animals of the Pleistocene which made 
the fauna of the Pampas of that time so remarkable. It had a great broad 
head, short, snub-nosed muzzle, and sharper, more doglike teeth than 
bears, showing that it was more carnivorous. Toward the end of the 
Pleistocene one species, probably a migrant from the South, dwelt in Cali- 
fornia, and is described by Cope 204 as "the most powerful carnivorous 
mammal which has lived on our continent" ;. it was as big as a grizzly, had 
a face like a bulldog, and died out with the disappearance of the huge, slow 
creatures on which it preyed, more by main strength, I guess, than by any 
exercise of activity or intelligence. 

The nearest existing representative of these ancient forms 
is the little- known iEluropus of eastern Tibet, — a bulky, 
broad-faced, vegetable-eating, bearlike creature, grayish white 
except the legs, shoulders, ears, and rings around the eyes, 



ANCESTRY OF BEARS 



iEluropus. 



which are black. This curious relic of a bygone time stands 

between Arctotherium and Hyaenarctus ; and between the latter 

and Ursus, the genus of modern bears, stands in 

Cope's view Tremarctus, with two species, one fossil 

and the other living in the quaint little "spectacled" bears of 

the Peruvian Andes, about which little is known. 

Not until the Pliocene in the Old World and later in the New did the 
true bears (Ursus) appear, so that this is perhaps the youngest branch of 
the Carnivora; and while highly specialized in many particulars, e.g. loss 
of tail, they retain many primitive features, such as the plantigrade walk. 
Of the various extinct species, all large in size, the most important is the 
cave bear of Europe, whose remains are extremely numerous in cavern 
floors s3 and other recent deposits, mingled with evidence that it persisted 
until long after man began to roam its forests; and he undoubtedly extin- 
guished its line. It was so like a grizzly, judging by its bones, that some 
naturalists have asserted that the grizzly is its direct American descendant. 
These cav°s also contain skeletons of the brown bear, proving that its dis- 
tribution was in tne past far more extensive than now; in fact, it was not 
until shortly before the Norman Conquest that it was exterminated in 
the British Isles, which had furnished in great numbers the ''Caledonian 
bears" so popular in the arena shows of imperial Rome. 

Bears are massive, 
clumsy beasts, with 
thick limbs, big, 
strongly clawed, 
plantigrade, naked- 
soled feet, and an 
ability to take the 
world as they find it. 
It is in the skull and 
teeth that a bear 
diverges most from 
other carnivores. In- 
stead of having a 
greatly inflated tympanic bulla, associated with big ears and 
implying the quick hearing so notable in dogs, cats, etc., 




Grizzly Beak. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

this bulla is small and flattened. The teeth have a general 
resemblance to those of dogs, but the broad, flat-crowned molars 
are more adapted to grinding than to cutting, and the flesh 
teeth are more massive and blunt. Other family peculiarities 
are the extreme shortness of the tail, the coarse hair, and the 
likeness in color and aspect, so that their classification is still 
in dispute. 

European zoologists regard all brown bears of both continents as a 
single species with numerous local varieties; while American systemists 
Classifica- now divide those of America into seven species, besides half 
tion. a dozen black species. For our purpose the list may stand 

as follows : — 

i. Polar or Ice Bear: long-bodied (about nine feet), long-necked, yel- 
lowish or white the year through ; arctic regions. 

2. The Brown Bears (including Alaskan brown bears) : largest and heavi- 
est of the tribe, yellowish or grizzled to dark brown or dull purple ; Europe, 
northern Asia (except Japan, — see No. 5), and Alaska. 

3. The Grizzlies (including the "Barren Grounds" but not the "Cin- 
namon" varieties, since the latter is simply a reddish phase of either a 
grizzly or an American black bear): large, massive, broad-headed, more 
or less hoary ; western United States and northwestern Canada. 

4. American Black Bears: smaller, head more pointed, flat profile; 
sooty black to red brown, snout yellowish ; hind feet smaller than fore feet ; 
North America generally. 

5. Asian Black Bears: like No. 4, but breast marked with a light- 
colored inverted chevron ; fur (as in No. 4) comparatively thin, glossy, and 
without dense underfur; Himalayan region, Japan. 

6. Glacier Bear: see page 220. 

7. Sun Bear: see page 220. 

All the foregoing are of the genus Ursus; dental formula: i. §; c. f ; 
p. f ; m. |; but several or all premolars may be small, and shed before 
maturity. 

8. Sloth Bear: small (about five feet), head pointed, lips long and 
mobile; tongue very long and protrusile; claws white, very long; fur 
coarse, long, especially on shoulders, blackish gray on muzzle, and whitish 
in a crescent on the breast ; all India and Ceylon. 

9. Andean Spectacled Bear: see page 211. 

10. Tibetan Party-colored Bear: see page 221. 

212 



BEAR CHARACTERISTICS 

Bears are rather solitary, the males wandering about alone, 
the females accompanied by cubs often as big as themselves. 
The young, two as a rule, are born in midwinter in the family 
den, which may be a rocky cave or the hollow of an old tree, 
the center of a dense thicket or simply a bed beneath the snow. 
The cubs at birth are surprisingly small — not larger than 
rabbits — and are naked, blind, and very slow to develop ; 
hence the mother is extremely solicitous about them, and heed- 
lessly brave in their defense. Most of the instances of un- 
provoked attacks by bears have been cases of mothers who 
saw or fancied their babies in danger. 

Although courageous and able to overcome the greatest 
rivals or foes, the weight and indolence of bears forbid their 
chasing the large grazers, while the agile small 

, , . Character. 

ones mostly keep out of their way; hence the flesh 
they get is mainly that of animals too young to escape, or such 
as chance throws into their grasp. When lurking near settle- 
ments, they are likely to make forays upon the farms, and to 
carry off colts, calves, lambs, or pigs, especially the last, — and 
a bear climbing a rickety rail fence or stalking away through 
the moonlight with a squealing porker under his arm is a sight 
to see. A bear is a comical creature anyway, and never more so 
than when it feels good-natured and is amusing itself in cum- 
brous play. It can, when in a hurry, gallop as fast as a pony, 
but is too heavy to keep up the gait long, and usually its pace 
is a fast shuffling walk, leaving very manlike tracks. In the 
wilderness it tears open the houses of the beaver, muskrat, 
pack rat, and other hibernacula, and devours the tenants unless 
they get away. Thus Osgood 206 describes how an Alaskan 
bear pursues the ground squirrels there in spring : — 

"Sometimes he slips along the hillside and tries to catch the squirrel 
by a sudden pounce, but this usually fails. When the squirrel dodges into 
its near-by burrow new tactics are adopted. The bear immediately begins 
to dig, throwing out big turfs and clods at each stroke, using the left hand 

213 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

chiefly, and watching the hole intently all the time. While this is going on 
the squirrel sometimes runs out between the legs of the bear and makes 
for another hole. Possibly he is caught by a quick pounce. If he escapes, 
excavations begin immediately at the new hole. The bear digs for a few 
strokes, and then stops to poke his nose into the hole and sniff. Finally 
his efforts are successful, and the luckless squirrel is devoured." 

No wonder they are given to tearing down caches ! Carrion 
is another important resource; and when a large carcass is 
found they scrape a shallow pit near by and half bury, half 
cover it for future use — a practice of which hunters take 
advantage both for sport and to poison the animals for the sake 
of getting their always marketable skins. The polar bear, in 
fact, must depend largely on the washing ashore of dead ani- 
mals. This and other far northern species, however, hunt for 
live walruses and seals, traveling in winter scores of miles 
across the sea ice in search of them, but in summer finding them 
more conveniently. "The seal is basking on the ice. The 
bear at a proper distance quietly enters the water swimming 
toward its prey, keeping well below, and only occasionally allow- 
ing the nose to touch the surface, sufficiently to catch a breath. 
At last it rises just beneath and in front of the seal, whose 
capture is certain." They also seize porpoises and other small 
cetaceans, and quantities of fish. . 

Fish, indeed, form a staple article of food wherever they can 
be obtained. The most businesslike fishing seems to be that 
for salmon by the bears of Alaska and Kamchatka, whose 
paths along the banks of favorite rivers are beaten roads. Both 
Guillemard 205 and Osgood 206 speak of this, and describe the 
clever fishing, the latter as follows, referring to the streams 
crowded all summer with migratory salmon : — 

"In fishing the bears do not get all their prey in shallow water or on 

bars and riffles in small streams, as is generally supposed, but often go into 

comparatively deep water in large streams. Practically all the 

fishing is done at night or very early in the morning; though 

their habits in this respect have doubtless changed in recent decades, 

214 




AMEk K BEAR 



BEARS AS FISHERMEN 

since they have been hunted so much. It is most interesting to watch 
an old she-bear with cubs. The cubs do not attempt to fish, but stay on 
the bank and receive contributions. The old she-bear stands upright and 
wades in water even up to her neck, going very slowly with the current, 
watching the water, and making scarcely a ripple in it. She holds her arms 
down at her sides with her hands spread, and when she feels a salmon com- 
ing up against her, clutches it with her claws and throws it out on the bank 
to the expectant cubs. Often she stands perfectly motionless for a con- 
siderable time, and when she moves it is with extreme deliberation and 
caution. After supplying the cubs, she puts the next fish in her mouth 
and goes ashore to eat it. If salmon are plentiful or easily obtained, the 
two sides of a fish are all that she will eat. . . . When fishing in shallow 
water, the bear walks slowly on all fours as silently as possible, and when 
a fish appears in a riffle deals it a sharp blow on the head. . . . 

"In the fall, toward the end of the salmon run, when fishing becomes 
unprofitable, most of the bears retire to the hills, where they feed on berries 
and put on fat during the last few weeks preceding hibernation. The black 
crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) is eaten in great quantities, and various 
species of Vaccinium which abound are also taken." 

How the little black bears of the Maine woods go a- fishing 
is related in The American Naturalist (Vol. XVIII, 1884): — 

"I came suddenly upon a very large bear in a thick swamp, lying upon 
a large hollow log across a brook, fishing; and he was so much interested 
in his work that he did not notice me until I had approached very near him. 
... He fished in this wise : There was a large hole through the log on which 
he lay, and he thrust his forearm through the hole and held his open paw 
in the water and waited for the fish to gather around and into it, and when 
filled he clutched his fist and brought up a handful of fish, and sat and ate 
them with great gusto; then down with the paw again, and so on. The 
brook was fairly alive with little trout and red-sided suckers, and some black 
suckers. He did not eat their heads. There was quite a pile of them on 
the log. I suppose the oil in his paw attracted the fish and baited them 
even better than a fly hook, and his toe nails were his hooks, and sharp 
ones, too, and once grabbed the fish were sure to stay. They also catch 
frogs in these forest brooks." 

If this seems small business for such a big beast, still more 
ridiculous is the fact that insects form an important part of 
the diet of all bears, save those of the icy regions; and those 

215 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



living along the shores of Hudson Bay come regularly in sum- 
mer to feed upon the windrows of day-flies (ephemerids) drifted 
insect upon the beach. The insects most sought for are 

Eating. suc Y i as dwell m colonies and have nests stored 
with luscious grubs or combs of honey ; and all over the world 
Bruin's favorite summer occupation is tearing rotten logs and 
stumps to pieces in search of fat larvae, and digging out ants and 
bees from their nests in the ground or in tree trunks — the 
latter an exercise of which our black bear is particularly fond. 

The outraged in- 
sects swarm over 
the marauder, buzz 
in his coat, creep 
into his ears, eyes, 
and mouth, and 
sting him till he 
rolls on the ground 
in a fury of pain, 
or blinds himself 
with a smear of 
honey and dirt in 
mad efforts to brush 
the tormentors away ; but his appetite outlasts his distress, and he 
keeps at it till gorged with honey, and then, cloyed and bedaubed 
with "linked sweetness," stumbles off to some retreat where he 
may give himself sleepily to the delightful task of licking his fur. 
The most inveterate insect hunter of the tribe, probably, is the 
Indian sloth bear, a common name for which, indeed, is " honey 
bear." Baker 147 remarks that its favorite delicacy is termites, 
for which it will scratch a large hole in the hardest soil to the 
Sloth depth of two or three feet. "The claws of the fore- 

J paws are three or four inches in length, and are use- 

ful implements for digging. It is astonishing to see the result 
upon soil that would require a pickax to excavate a hole. 

216 







Oi, 




■ ■' f ' ~* O'*" 


.:-Cjf-i 


/ Jgj 






•^mfcj^l 






■ "*** K^) *H 






-*- ^ 


1 m jg 





Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Society. 

An Alaskan Bear. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



"LOCUSTS AND WILD LLOJVEV" 

Upon the hard sides of such pits as those made in search of 
white ants the claw marks are deeply imprinted, showing the 
labor that has been expended for a most trifling prize, as the 
nest when found would only yield a few mouthfuls." 

To this Jerdon adds some curious facts as follows: "The 
power of suction in the bear, as well as of propelling wind from 
its mouth, is very great. It is by this means enabled to procure 
its common food of white ants and larvae with ease. On arriv- 
ing at an ant-hill the bear scrapes away with the fore feet until 
he reaches the large combs at the bottom of the galleries. He 
then with violent puffs dissipates the dust and crumbled par- 
ticles of the nest, and sucks out the inhabitants of the comb by 
such forcible inhalations as to be heard at two hundred yards' 
distance or more." 

Nevertheless in summer and autumn bears live mainly on 
vegetable fare, — fruit, berries, roots, bark, lichens, tender 
shoots, etc., according to the productions of the country. 
"When the nuts and berries are ripe, . . . and the corn is in 
the milk tender and delicious, and the wild fruits, grapes and 
persimmons and pawpaws, are ripe, then truly does the black 
bear laugh and grow fat." Even the surly grizzly, and the 
giants of Alaska and Tibet, feed in autumn mainly on this 
fattening fare — absorbing fuel to keep the fire of life burning 
during the coming winter's famine sleep. Osgood 20R tells of 
a glossy young black bear which he shot one September even- 
ing in southern Alaska whose stomach was packed full of clean 
crowberries. 

"The feeling of satisfaction enjoyed by the possessor of this well-filled 
paunch was very evident. Before shooting it I had an opportunity to watch 
it feeding, and was amused by its exhibition of exuberant spirits. It would 
browse leisurely for a few minutes, then would suddenly give a bound and 
roll over and over down a little heather-grown glade to the bottom, and then 
jump up to gallop at full speed up and down and around in a circle, appar- 
ently impelled by nothing but sheer joy." 

217 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The recorded experience of men who have met bears in their 
native wilderness is most contradictory. Here is a powerful 
Bears and an ^ well-armed beast of prey, which must be ex- 
Man * pected to act like one ; yet many persons declare 

bears peaceful and even timid, rather than aggressive, except 
in defense of their young, of whose safety the mother is anx- 
iously jealous ; the cubs are so extraordinarily helpless when 
little, that she must care for them far more than need most 
other animals. Wildcats, fishers, minks, wolves, and foxes, — 
all search for them as tidbits. Hence the mother is justly sus- 
picious of everything, and liable to rush upon a man unpro- 
voked, for fear that he meditates harm to her treasures, but 
otherwise a bear will frequently show no hostility, or will 
even run away. I have known two full-grown grizzlies, sur- 
prised upon a mountain top in Colorado, to flee at break-neck 
speed down a rocky slope when a couple of men appeared. 
The ice bears of Spitzbergen are fearlessly attacked with spears 
by the Norwegian walrus hunters, who bring back a hundred 
or more of their skins annually. Many stories are told of per- 
sons who have met our black bears in the woods face to face 
and received no harm. The Syrian bears are noted for their 
gentleness ; they required a special command before it occurred 
to them to eat up the young hoodlums who were hooting at 
Elijah — and they were "she-bears" ! 

On the other hand cases abound of attack as savage and 
resistless as it was unexpected : a notable instance is re- 
corded of the grizzly by President Roosevelt, and others are 
given in an admirable survey of the question by Porter. 126 
When one is aroused to fight, its boldness and strength make it 
exceedingly formidable, and a blow from one of its paws is of 
killing force. A grizzly has been known to break the neck of a 
bison with one such stroke. That seems to be the customary 
method of attack, followed by clawing and biting, for the 
popular notion that a bear hugs its victim to death has no 

218 



THE BEAR IN FOLK LORE 

facts to support it. "The bear's temper, disposition, and 
power of offense seem to be underrated with respect to the 
species at large," is the conclusion of Porter's studies. 

''Whether because its appearance is less impressive than that of animals 
which have gathered about them most of the world's gossip, or for any 
other reason to which this inappreciation may be attributed, both in Eu- 
rope, Asia, and America, the Ursidae in general have undoubtedly less repu- 
tation than they seem to deserve, and less than the deeds they do and have 
done in all countries would apparently have brought with them as a matter 
of course. Poorly armed and primitive populations throughout the earth 
think differently, however, about them. In the folk lore of Europe and 
Asia this creature is conspicuous. The great hunters write of it in a re- 
spectful strain. No man who ever stood before an enraged bear thought 
lightly of its prowess. A host of well-known names are appended to state- 
ments concerning destructive arctoids in the Scandinavian mountains and 
the Pyrenees, in the Himalayas and Caucasus, the highlands of central 
India, and the forests and plains north and south of ' the stony girdle of 
the world.' 

"There is every reason why this beast should be formidable wherever it 
has not encountered modern weapons ; and that it is so its whole literature 
attests. Richardson's name (for the grizzly), Ursus ferox, translates his 
own experiences and those of native tribes. Colonel Pollok asserts that 
' in Assam bears are far more destructive to human life than tigers.' " 

The hibernation of the bear is a matter of necessity, depend- 
ing upon climate, ability to get winter food, and the need of 
rest. In very cold and snowy countries the females Hiberna- 
"den up" early and may be snowed under for weeks. tion - 
They do not go into torpidity but simply lie quietly, subsisting 
on their accumulated fat, the slow assimilation of which sus- 
tains their own life, and enables them to nurse the babies, 
which are born during this winter retirement. It is thus the 
female ice bear passes the cold months, but the males are abroad 
during all the long, dark, polar night, even as far north as men 
have ever gone. In the case of other northern species the males 
also hibernate, each by itself, but are liable to come out from 
time to time. 

219 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Two strange little bears are very distinct from the remainder, 
and deserve a few words. One is the glacier bear of the St. 
Glacier Elias Alps, Alaska. It has been known only since 
ear * 1895, and only one good specimen has thus far been 

examined. It stands only twenty-four inches high, and is of 
the general color of the silver fox, whitish on the belly, with 
the hair not long, but remarkably soft and with an under- 
wool ; the nose and cheeks are tan, the back of the- very short 
ears and the outer faces of the limbs, black. This pattern re- 
calls that of the ^Eluropus, which endures a similar climate. 
Nothing is known of its habits. 

The other one is the little sun bear, found from Assam down 

to Borneo, which weighs only about sixty pounds, and is black 

with a yellowish breast mark and a funny round 
Sun Bear. 

head with a square muzzle. These little "bruangs" 

are merry fellows, the pets of every "zoo," and at home spend 

their lives mainly in trees, which they climb like cats by the 

aid of their long, curved, exceedingly strong claws. 

The bear, so familiar yet so mysterious, so formidable yet having almost 
human traits, has appealed powerfully to the imagination of men in all 
places and ages ; and among the primitive folk of both the Old World and 
the New has been feared, revered, and endowed with marvelous gifts which 
have passed into a rich folk lore. Every book regarding the native North 
Americans tells of the veneration with which it was treated by our Indians 
in all parts of the continent ; the Ainu, or aborigines of Japan, still worship 
it; 207 and European mythology abounds in stories and legends of the heroic 
part it has played in the mystic affairs of the past. 208 

Associated with the bears in the "arctoid" group are the 
"coon-bears," — a family (Procyonidae) of odd little planti- 
grades, all American save one, of which our raccoon is leader. 
The structural relationship is undoubtedly closest to the bears 
and dogs, yet many of the species much resemble Oriental 
civets. Such a resemblance is not surprising, since fossils from 
the Oligocene and Miocene rocks illustrate the evolution of 

220 



THE TIBETAN PANDA 



Panda. 



these animals from primitive civetlike Eocene Carnivora. 

The connecting link between the raccoons and the bears is 

found in the panda, or coon-bear, of the eastern Himalayas 

and Tibet, which seems to be a fairly close cousin 

of the /Eluropus. It is about the size of a big cat, 

but of a form all its own, having high haunches, bearlike 

limbs and feet, with the long claws partly retractile, a thick 

woolly coat, and a long, furry, ring-marked tail. The upper 

parts are bright, 

glossy rust-red, but 

the triangular face 

is white with a red 

streak from each eye 

to the corners of the 

mouth, and the lower 

surface of the body 

and the legs are 

black. This quaint 

creature spends most 

of its time on the 

ground, but it can 

climb trees, and its A Coon-bear, the Panda. 

food and habits generally are much like those of a real bear. 

The remainder of the group is American. No animal, in- 
deed, is more characteristically American than is the raccoon, 
nor has any of our quadrupeds been more thoroughly and 
lovingly treated by our writers generally. 

Captain John Smith, in his report upon Virginia, mentions 
"a beast they call aroughcun, much like a badger, but vseth 
to hue on trees as Squirrels doe." The rapid Ameri- 

Raccoon. 

cans quickly shortened these sonorous syllables 
to "raccoon," and then cut even that down to "coon." If 
you were to dock his tail to a mere scut, and do not compare 
the markings on the face too closely, he is "much like a 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



badger," as the observant Smith said; but this is an accidental 
likeness soon forgotten, for the flexible nose, flat-soled feet, 
arched hindquarters, and long-ringed tail quickly impress 
themselves upon a new acquaintance. It is therefore its ways 
rather than appearance which declare him & miniature Bruin, 
— "that brief summary of a bear," as John Burroughs says. 

The home of a raccoon family is usually in a hollow high 
up in a tree, where a limb has been wrenched off by the wind, 

or water has rotted a hole 
large enough for their ac- 
commodation ; but now and 
then a place is selected 
nearer the ground, as a 
hollow log; and Kennicott 
tells us that on the prairies 
it will shelter itself in a 
hole dug by some badger 
or skunk. Properly, how- 
ever, the coon is a woods- 
man, and rather prefers 
swamps. In its chosen re- 
treat are produced in early 
spring five or six young 
ones that by and by grow 
large enough to leave home and follow the parents in their noctur- 
nal vagabondage, staying with them a year or so until they found 
families of their own. Hence in summer and early autumn, when 
coons wander a good deal, they are most often met with in 
family parties. It is rare to see a wild coon out of doors in 
daylight, however, for then he is usually rolled up asleep in 
some lofty crotch, where he dozes in the sunshine, rocked by 
the breeze. As winter comes on they restrict their roving, 
seek a permanent abode, and in the coldest weather hibernate 
completely. This, however, is only in the North, and even 

222 




The American Raccoon. 



CO OX CHA KA C TEKIS TICS 

there they are liable to awake and stir around during warm 
spells, and usually emerge from their torpidity in February or 
early March, when they are so thin and weak as to fall an easy 
prey to wildcats and other foes, and often enter barns and 
even farmhouses in search of food, to the joy of the farmer's 
boys and dogs. The raccoon eats anything he can get hold 
of; and Kennicott has summed up the matter concisely: — 

"The raccoon," he says, "is omnivorous. It eats flesh of any kind, 
preying upon small birds and mammals, when it can catch them, and some- 
times making destructive forays into the poultry yard. It devours birds' 
eggs whenever within reach, procuring the eggs of woodpeckers by thrust- 
ing its paws into their holes; it also watches turtles when depositing their 
eggs in the sand, and, upon their departure, digs them up. This animal is 
fond of fish, and displays remarkable dexterity in capturing them with his 
fore paws. It is also a most successful frog hunter, and may frequently be 
tracked along the river's edge, where it has been searching for frogs, cray- 
fish, water snails, and dead mussels. In summer, frogs often form a large 
portion of its food, when some species leave the water and therefore are 
easily caught. Insects are eaten to some extent, as are slugs and snails. 
It also feeds largely upon various vegetables in summer; and its particular 
fondness for green corn (maize) is well known to every farmer." 

The coon is as clever as a monkey with his paws; and to 
see one sit up with his back against a log, holding something 
to eat between his hind feet, and daintily picking away and 
handing morsels to his mouth with his paws, is irresistibly 
comic. Give one a half loaf of bread, and he will first of all 
dig a deep round hole down the center of its softest interior, now 
and then cocking up a knowing eye to ask what you think of 
the method. The common name along the southern coasts 
of the United States for the small, narrow, tangled, wild oys- 
ters that grow so abundantly in the salt marshes and inlets, 
is "coon oyster," in reference to the practice of the raccoons, 
who come down to feed upon them at high tide. Their par- 
tiality for crayfish, also, is notorious, those living in the far 
Southwest subsisting almost wholly upon these subterranean 

223 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

creatures, which they scratch out of their tubular burrows, 

so that the name "crab eater" has been given to the very 

similar species of South and Central America. One of the 

singularities of the raccoon is its habit of dip- 
Habits. .... 

ping its food in water or washing it, to which it owes 

its specific name, — lotor, the washer. Various explanations of 
this have been given ; but it is probable that the simplest — 
namely, that it seeks to cleanse the food — is the nearest the 
truth. Bears do much the same thing on occasion, and will 
soak bread and similar dry, stiff food in water whenever they 
can before eating it. 

The prime delicacy of the world in the coon's opinion is 
Indian corn, when in that milky condition of sweet half-ripe- 
ness which so attracts the squirrels, the mice, the birds, and 
you and me, if you please ; and when he has found it he strips 
back the husk as deftly as any "neat-handed Phyllis," and 
disposes of the succulent kernels with ease and rapidity. This 
is his occupation and delight in the still, hot August nights, 
and this is the time when coon hunting is most fun and best 
rewarded, for then the animal is so fat that a large one may 
weigh twenty-five pounds, and his flesh is tender, juicy, and 
well flavored, whereas at other times of the year it is rather 
poor provender, even for a stew, and sometimes as rank as 
that of a muskrat; nevertheless, our colored friends in the 
South are willing to eat it at any time. 

Coon hunting is one of the truly American sports of the chase, though 
its devotees have found difficulty in persuading folks to take their sport 
seriously. It is, in truth, a comical sort of hunting, yet calls for endur- 
ance, since an old coon may run four or five miles after he has been started, 
zigzagging hither and yon, circling round and round trees, leaving a track 
calculated to make a dog dizzy, swimming streams, and running along the 
tops of logs and snake fences, hiding his trail with the craftiness of a fox. 

The hunt is always organized late at night, and consists of a headlong 
scramble after a pack of curs known as "coon dogs," because goo'd for noth- 
ing else, by the aid of flaring torches or the uncertain moon ; and ends in 

224 



R IXC-TAILED CAT 



finding the gay little rascal up a tree, whence he must be shot, or shaken 
down into a fierce melee among the dogs by some adventurous climber, or 
perhaps the tree itself must be felled. Only one instance is on record of 
a coon coming down because he was asked to, — that in which Davy Crock- 
ett made the request ! 

In Mexico and the southwestern United States there is a 
charming cousin (Bassariscus) of the raccoon, called "caco- 
mistle" by Anglo-Mexicans, but known more commonly among 



S3 '-v^S 


W 




;%^§pg| 


^SHpo^yj 


«H5BH^^- -^ = ^ is ' '^^^am 


A^mf /reSS^* 


fip^S^ 1 






S^^^fei 


ta^fc^— w 


^»j|gppiiM«■ , ^^^ 


i 


EtteSi S?T<»-~r. '■ -_ 



Ring-tailed Bassarisc, or American Civet Cat. 

us as the ring-tailed cat, or American civet cat — not inaptly 
if one can imagine a civet with the head of a fox. 

"In nature," says Lockington, "it is a dweller in the woods, 
making a moss-lined nest in a hollow tree. ... It often grows 
bold and enters the miner's tent, and plunders his 

. . . . Cacomistle. 

provision bag, thus sometimes getting caught. It is 

easily tamed, and becomes so familiar and entertaining that it 

does much to soften the asperities and relieve the monotony of 

Q 225 



THE LITE OF MAMMALS 

the miner's life. To him it becomes a plaything, and its merry 
kitten ways make it almost companionable. ... In Mexico, 
where it is often tamed, it repays all kindness by keeping the 
house clear of mice." 

Far more imaginative and vivid is the picture of it given us 
by Mr. Beebe, 242 a part of whose account I must give myself 
the pleasure of quoting : — 

"A ring-tailed cat squealed from the entrance of its cave somewhere 
up among the dense shadows on the cliff wall [among the foothills of the 
volcano of Colima], and presently the little animal leaped to some over- 
hanging tree and scrambled down to level ground. . . . Shrill little squeals 
have often wakened us at night, and now the little black-and-white creature 
which is making its way so stealthily through the leaves gives utterance to 
this strange cry. The moonlight is bright and every detail is plain, as 
the animal leaves the shadows of the underbrush. Its motions are quick 
and catlike, its ears small and erect, surmounting a tiny face like some little 
gnome of the woods. Mouth and nose are pointed, eyes large and lustrous, 
glowing round and deep in the pale light. But what the gorgeous train of 
feathers is to the peacock its tail is to the ring-tailed cat. The creature 
stands half crouching, listening to all the night sounds, when suddenly 
its tail appears — no bare possumlike affair, nor even like the more fluffy 
appendage of the raccoon, but a great filmy mass, ringed with black and 
white, curling and furling gracefully over and around the little animal. 
Now the hairs lie close, and the tail narrows, again it expands and fluffs 
out larger than the entire body of the little cat. 

"Here the ring-tailed cat or bassariscus — for he seems to have no 
generally accepted common name — comes and goes, taking bits of meat 
to his family somewhere up among the rocky cliffs. He is a full-grown 
animal, and yet his tiny face has a wistful, almost infantile expression. 
How interesting must be the baby ringtails ! But the innocent expression 
of these little fellows is only skin-deep. Great is the havoc they work among 
the doves and other birds which roost near by. They are somewhat like 
the raccoons, but are much more active and catlike. Among the branches 
they are at home, and can run up a tree trunk like a squirrel. A strange 
habit is that, like the iguanas, they sometimes leap from high limbs, crash- 
ing down among the dense underbrush. . . . 

"The ring-tailed bassariscus is interesting on account of its relations 
to the raccoons. A study of its skeleton shows that it is almost identical 

226 



KINKAJOU AND CO AT IS 

with certain doglike creatures which lived during the geological age known 
as the Oligocene, perhaps over a million years ago. These animals of 
ancient days were the direct ancestors of the modern raccoons. So it was 
a hint of the far-distant past which squealed and leaped about our tent at 
night." 

A second larger species makes its home in the Tropics, where 
also dwells a relative the kinkajou, or potto as the Brazil- 
ian negroes call it, borrowing very naturally the 

. . Kinkajou. 

name of an African lemur, for this animal looks 

like a yellowish, woolly, round-headed, long-bodied galago. 

It dwells almost altogether in trees, feeds on fruit and insects, 




South American Kinkajou. 

honey, etc., and has a long, prehensile tail; its good nature 
and monkeylike activity make it a favorite pet. 

Lastly we come to the long-nosed, pig-snouted, ring-tailed, 
funny and fierce little brown coatis, which root up the mold 
of the tropical woods in search of worms, grubs, 
beetles, and other edibles. These piglike man- 
ners are enhanced by their gathering in packs, when they be- 
come foes by no means to be despised by larger animals, for 
their tusks are long and sharp. Lockington 75 and Belt 26 
give the fullest accounts known to me, — the former of the 
animal in captivity, and the latter wild. Says Belt : — 

"One day I came upon a pack of 'pisotis' {Nasua fusca), a raccoon- 
like animal that ascends all the small trees, searching for birds' nests and 

227 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

fruits. There were not less than fifty in the pack I saw, and nothing seemed 
likely to escape their search in the track they were traveling. . . . They are 
very fond- of eggs ; and the tame ones, which are very often kept as pets, 
play havoc amongst the poultry when they get loose." He mentions else- 
where the animal's fondness for iguanas, which it gets only with difficulty, 
as it has to climb every tree, and then, unless it can surprise them asleep, 
see them drop off the branch and scuttle safely away. "I once," Belt con- 
tinues, "saw a pisoti hunting for iguanas among some bushes near the 




The Red Coati {Nasua rufa). 

Lake, where they were very numerous, but during the quarter of an hour 
that I watched him he never caught one. . . . Master Pisoti, however, 
seemed to take all his disappointments with the greatest coolness, and con- 
tinued the pursuit unflaggingly. Doubtless experience had taught him 
that, sooner or later, he would surprise a corpulent iguana fast asleep on 
some branch, and too late to drop from his resting place. In the forest, I 
always saw the pisoti hunting in large bands from which an iguana would 
have small chance of escape, for some were searching along the ground, 
whilst others ranged over the branches of the trees." 

Says Mr. Beebe, speaking of a locality near Manzanillo : — 

"A colony of these coatis lived among the rocks not far from our camp, 
and every evening they started out on their foraging expeditions. They 
Manners did not join their cousins, the raccoons and ring-tailed cats, 
in Mexico. about our tents. When they came out about dusk, they all 
trooped down to the water's edge and drank thirstily, then washed their 
faces, coon-fashion, and combed their handsome fur with their long claws. 
They appeared to feed upon lizards and berries, and they were also very 

228 



NIGHT IN A MEXICAN JUNGLE 

fond of a certain kind of hard, round fruit. When four or five of them 
were among the branches of a small sapling, the young tree suffered severely. 
They hunted mice in the open spaces of the woods, and I sometimes saw 
several crouched here and there, waiting for the first signs of life among the 
leaves. With a dog they were easily treed, and they fought fiercely when 
cornered. When playing and leaping about each other they uttered low, 
harsh grunts, and we never heard any other utterance. The Mexicans 
delight to hunt these coati mondi, treeing them with dogs and killing them 
with revolvers. They work themselves up to a high pitch of excitement, 
shouting, as a kind of hunting cry, ' Adios, TejonP — the latter name 
being the Mexican name of the animal. 

''How perfectly the actions and general mien of these nocturnal creatures 
reflect the efficiency of their means of defense ! The life of the little mice, 
the prey of all, is one great fear; they nibble, wash their fur, scamper 
about, but ever with large fearful eyes, ever with feet braced to spring to 
the protection of their holes. The opossums start at every sound and 
slink tremblingly away. The coatis make little show of defense, but when 
there is any avenue of escape flee quickly. The ring-tailed cats turn a 
moment and bare their teeth in a defiant snarl before taking to flight. 
The armadillos potter serenely on their way, heeding little to right or left, 
respectful of others' rights, but calmly confident in their tooth-and-claw- 
proof armor of scales. The skunk alone dares to herald his presence with 
flourishing tail." 



MARINE CARNIVORES — Order, PINNIPEDIA 

There would follow here, were it to be included in the pres- 
ent volume, a chapter on the sea bears, seals, and walruses, 
which constitute the marine division of the Carnivora termed 
Pinnipedia, — the fin-footed carnivores. 

The members of this group have their entire organization 
modified to adapt them to an exclusively aquatic existence. 
The body approaches a fishlike form, and the four limbs are 
turned into more or less perfect paddles, or "flippers." The 
teeth are of the carnivorous type, but without a special car- 
nassial; the eyes are always large and prominent; and exter- 
nal ears are lacking except in one family, — the fur seals or 
sea bears. They are found almost exclusively in the cold 
seas and in salt water. 

While there is no doubt of their kinship with carnivores, the degree 
of it, or the history of the divergence of the ancestors of the pinnipeds 
toward a maritime life, is not well known. Their closest relatives on land 
seem to be the bears; but no particular connection between them and the 
pinnipeds has been made out, nor does the sea otter, in spite of sundry 
resemblances, seem to be among pinniped ancestors. The most acceptable 
opinion at present is, that this is a group of very ancient independence, 
descended from a creodont origin (see page 80). The most complete 
history of the group is Allen's "Monograph," 234 but much has been pub- 
lished in respect to the fur seals by the United States government. 



230 



HOOFED ANIMALS — Order, UNGULATA 

This is the great assemblage of animals whose toes are guarded 
by hoofs instead of armed with claws, and which feed on plants, 
— the herbivores. It embraces, besides many extinct groups 
and species, the cattle, sheep, antelopes, giraffes, deer, camels, 
swine, horses, rhinoceroses, tapirs, elephants, and their kindred. 
They exist in every part of the habitable globe except Aus- 
tralasia, have furnished sustenance to the larger Carnivora, 
and have supplied the need of man for assistance in his labor, 
and with materials for food, shelter, and clothing. Without 
them human civilization would have been impossible. 

One cannot distinguish among the earliest mammals the 
forerunners of the carnivorous from those of the herbivorous 
lines ; but before the end of the Eocene period condyi- 
they become differentiated, and there appear forms arthra. 
clearly in the line of evolution toward the ungulate type. 
Thence onward they fall into distinct lines of development, 
termed suborders, the oldest and most generalized of which 
is the Condylarthra, 2 ™ which originated in the Cretaceous age 
and came to an end in the middle of the Eocene. These were 
animals of moderate size, imperfectly plantigrade, with five 
toes all around, teeth adapted both to cutting flesh and grinding 
plant tissues, and small, smooth brains. The best known is 
Phenacodus, — a slender, long-tailed creature, resembling a 
tapir in proportions, but smaller. The condylarths are believed 
to foreshadow the perissodactyls (see page 352) ; but their near- 
est representatives are a second suborder, the Hyracoidea, 
which, beginning in the earliest Eocene, has persisted until 
now in the African conies, rock-badgers, or hyraces. 

231 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

These extraordinary little animals, ranging in size from rats to rabbits, 
have an outward likeness to rodents, but are really very different. The 
skull and teeth much resemble those of the rhinoceros; there 
are twenty -one pairs of ribs, and the short legs end in five 
toes, which are united by the skin, as in the elephant and rhinoceros, and 
are round and soft, merely protected in front by a broad nail, which does 
not reach the ground. Their tailless bodies are clothed with thick, uni- 
formly dark brown hair, discolored or absent around a curious gland near 
the middle of the back. They live in rocky or stony places, in communities, 




The South African Rock Badger {Hyrax capensis). 

like rabbits; make their homes in holes under rocks; feed at night or in 
the early morning on leaves and young shoots of trees and bushes; are 
timid and disappear with a squeaking cry at the least alarm ; and in general 
behave much like our pikas. The only Asiatic one, the daman, inhabits 
Syria and Arabia, and is the "cony" of the Bible, prohibited to the Israel- 
ites under the mistaken belief that it chewed the cud; but it is now eaten 
by the Arabs. Several species inhabit Abyssinia and East Africa down 
to Mozambique; and the Cape and Natal are the home of one, familiar 
to English colonists as rock badger or rock rabbit, and to the Dutch as 
dasse, and often tamed as a pet. Three species of Central Africa differ 
decidedly from the others by their arboreal habits, making their breeding 
nests in holes in trees. 

Amblypoda (stump-toed) is the name of another primitive 
suborder which began as a contemporary of the Condylar- 

232 



PREDECESSORS OF THE UNGULATES 

thra, if, indeed, it did not develop out of it, but lasted much 
longer, and furnished some of the most remarkable of the 
great fossils disinterred from the early rocks of Ambiy- 
Wyoming. They had rather small, short feet with P oda * 
five toes, each covered at the end by a little hoof, and all, with 
the heel, resting in a bunch on the ground; and were large 
animals, some even elephantine. 

The earlier forms, such as Pantolambda, were light, long-tailed, and horn- 
less, somewhat doglike in form, little removed from the creodonts, and 
probably largely beasts of prey. Later (in the Wind River formations) 
came the coryphodons, chiefly American, which carried a huge skull 
lightened by big air chambers as in our elephants, and containing a very 
small brain; and the canine teeth projected from the mouth in strong tusks 
so that the head must have been much like that of a hippopotamus. Cope * 2U 
said they probably resembled long-tailed bears, with the important excep- 
tion that in their feet they were much like the elephant, and doubtless had 
a shuffling and ambling gait, awkward from the inflexibility of the ankle. 
But in compensation for the probable lack of speed, these animals were 
most formidably armed with tusks more robust than those of the Carnivora 
and generally more elongate, and attrition preserved rather than diminished 
their acuteness. The size of the (about twenty) species varied from that 
of a tapir to that of an ox. 

These died out and were succeeded by a group of still more 
gigantic amblypods, the Dinocerata, 212 with limbs taller and 
more slender in proportion, though strong enough Dinoce- 
to support a body in some species as large as an rata - 
average elephant's; and they stood upon their toes. 

These huge beasts must have had much the appearance, habits, and food 
of our rhinoceroses, but their low-hanging heads were far more uncouth 
and remarkable, since the skull was long, narrow, flat, and with almost no 
brain cavity. Xo mammal known had a brain so small and reptilian as 
had these. They were armed not only with long tushes hanging from the 
upper jaw like walrus tusks, but with three pairs of horns, — two on the 
snout pointing forward, two on the upper jaw bones flaring outward, and 
two above the eyes with a bony crest arising broadly behind them. A series 
of skulls exhibited in the Natural History Museum in New York shows 
most strikingly the evolution of these protuberances from an insignificant 

233 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

beginning; but whether or not they were covered with horny sheaths is 
not known. The various forms have been named Dinoceras, Tinoceras, 
Loxolophodon, Uintatherium, etc. These amblypods became extinct at 
the close of the Eocene, and the last ones, though greatly superior in bulk 
and armament, had smaller and less useful brains than had their earlier 
forbears. The group degenerated and ended in failure — the machine 
became too big and unwieldy for the engineer in charge. 

Another primitive ungulate suborder, Ancylopoda, widespread 
in Miocene and earlier times, contained large beasts shaped 
Ancylo- somewhat like hyenas, and having curiously huge- 
poda * clawed feet and other features which make their 

true place undeterminable as yet. The most typical ones 
are Chalicotherium and Macrotherium. 213 The Typotheria 
and Toxodontia are other extinct primitive suborders some- 
what approaching the Elephants (Proboscidea), and a part 
of that amazing early Tertiary fauna of the Argentine pampas 
disclosed by the labors of Lydekker, Ameghino, and Scott. 
Toxodon was a prominent representative genus of a group of 
great rhinoceroslike, marsh-loving, hoofed creatures such as 
the nesodons (yet some were smaller), with massive heads and 
high hindquarters, having in much of their structure a most 
curious resemblance to rodents. Some of them were armed 
with self-sharpening tushes like a huge boar. 

None of the foregoing seem to have been successes, so to 
speak; that is, they were unable to change with the gradually 
altering conditions of climate and vegetation as time advanced, 
and were crowded out by the more adaptable progenitors of 
modern hoofed mammals. 

All existing ungulates except the elephants and conies fall 
Ungulate within one of two suborders, according to the struc- 

Distinctions. ture of ^^ ^ namdy . _ 

I. Artiodactyla — even-toed, or split-hoofed ungulates. 

II. Peris sodactyla — odd-toed, or solid-hoofed ungulates. 

234 



BONES OF THE FEET 



The artiodactyls differ, then, from the perissodactyls most conspicu- 
ously in the form of the foot. Both have lost the plantigrade walk of their 
Tertian- ancestors, and now step on the tips of their toes. This has been 
gradually gained as an adaptation to the increase of dry land and the for- 
mation of grassy plains, which we know went on more and more as time 
advanced, especially 
through the last third 
of the Tertiary period. 
The short massive 
legs and spreading 
five-toed plantigrade 
feet, useful in sus- 
taining an animal's 
weight in marshes, 
were slowly changed 
to longer, more slen- 
der limbs and a 
digitigrade walk, as 
greater speed and 
nimbleness were re- 
quired in making 
their way over wide 
pastures and to and 
from watering places, 
or in escaping the 
beasts of prey which 
were themselves 
steadily becoming swifter and more active in jumping by a similar evolu- 
tion. The carnivores kept pace with them in every sense of the word. 
This useful alteration in limb structure, following changing habits, reached 
its utmost development in the two groups we are now considering, and 
brought about interesting alterations in the skeleton. The instep and palm 
bones (metapodials) were greatly lengthened, and the bonelets of the wrist 
and ankle (carpals and tarsals) were changed in form and rearranged. 
These changes proceeded from the earliest beginnings along two lines. 
In the first the third and fourth toes of the original five (practically the cen- 
tral ones, as the first, being useless, was lost almost at the start) were con- 
tinually forced to bear the weight and make the push as each step was taken, 
and consequently grew at the expense of the others, and equally; and this 
formed the two-toed, cloven, or artiodactyl style of foot. The outside 

235 




Skeleton of Fore Feet of Ungulates. 
i, Pig. 2, Ox. 3, Tapir. 4, Horse. 
Bones: R, radius; (J, ulna; A, scaphoid; B, semi-lunar; 
C, cuneiform ; D, trapezium; E, trapezoid; F, magnum ; 
G, unciform ; P, pisiform ; G, centrale carpi ; M, meta- 
carpus (metapodials). The digits are numbered. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

digits (second and fifth) of each foot, getting less and less shock and strain 
as the middle toes were enlarged by constant use, remained undeveloped, 
or even gradually lessened, until all that is left of them in most cases are 
the two little "false hoofs" which hang behind the pastern. 

In the second line (perissodactyls) the strain came, for some unknown 
reason, more upon the third or central toe, and this by a similar history 
developed at the expense of the side toes, until in its most perfect form, the 
horse, nothing remains of the latter, and the whole weight rests upon the 
hoof -shod tip of the single central digit. At the same time, in both divisions 
the smaller bones (ulna and fibula) of the limbs became reduced and fused 
with the radius and tibia; and the clavicles disappeared as a result of the 
elevation and compacting of the body. 

Coupled with this went on changes in the dentition, also along divergent 
lines. 1 Canines would be an incumbrance to grazing animals, and have 
been reduced or have disappeared except where serviceable as weapons. 
The gap they left has gradually broadened into the " diastema," or space 
where a horse carries its bits. In the artiodactyls, largely browsers, the 
incisors of the upper jaw have been practically lost, and the premolars and 
molars are unlike and have broad, flat crowns; while the perissodactyl 
(grazers) are furnished with strong, chisel-shaped biting incisors in both 
jaws, and all the cheek teeth are much alike, — long, deep-set, and strong, 
with massive, squarish crowns crossed by curving ridges of dentine, making 
them the perfection of grinders. The stomach is a much more compli- 
cated organ in the artiodactyls than in any other group. It must be con- 
ceded, however, that these and other present distinctions weaken or disap- 
pear when traced back toward the common ancestry of the two divisions 
which seem to have separated at the very dawn of mammalian history. 
An explanation of why there should be two such lines of development 
rather than one is that the originator of the split-hoofed line walked with 
that twisting motion of the feet still very noticeable in cattle. 

The order Artiodactyla is divisible into two well-marked 
sections : — 

A. Ruminantia — ruminants ; horned animals. 

B. Suina — non-ruminants ; swine. 

The former include the cud chewers — those which gather 
and swallow their food in haste and then at leisure gulp it up 
and rechew it in small quantities (cuds) and very thoroughly. 
This strange operation, 1 like the carrying away of food by 

236 



STOMACH OF RUMINANTS 



Ruminants. 



pocket mice, monkeys, etc., enabled these comparatively de- 
fenseless animals to gather nutriment in a short time and then 
retreat to a safe place to prepare it for digestion. 
Associated with this practice is a large, compli- 
cated stomach, normally consisting of four chambers, into 
the first and largest of which the hastily swallowed forage is 
first received and well moistened, and out of which it comes 




Stomach of a Ruminant. 



Stomach opened to show the internal structure, a, (Esophagus ; b, rumen; c, reticu- 
lum ; d, psalterium ; e, abomasum ; f, duodenum. 

as "cuds." Then, when swallowed a second time, it passes 
on into the second or true stomach, where real digestion be- 
gins. The ruminants are also called Selenodontia, because 
of the crescentic outline of the hard ridges shown on the worn 
crowns of their molar teeth; they never have more than a 
single pair of incisors in the upper jaw. and usually none; 
their metapodiaJs are united into a "cannon bone"; and they 
alone among existing animals wear paired horns. 

"Under the term 'horns' are commonly confused two very distinct 
structures. . . . The word ought not, strictly, to include the bony antlers 
of deer or the giraffe, since these, although to a certain extent 
epidermal outgrowths, consist of true bone built up from blood 
deposits, and are not at all transformed cuticle or 'horn.' Nevertheless, as 
Beddard points out, the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. 

237 



Horns. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The simplest condition is seen in the giraffe, each of whose paired horns 
is a straight, bony outgrowth, the os cornu, originally separate from the 
skull, but becoming permanently fused with it early in life, and is covered 
with wholly unmodified furry skin. In deer there is the same os cornu 
which may here be branched, and never becomes fused with the skull, but 
on the contrary is shed and renewed annually, and is covered with a skin 
modified into 'velvet,' which decays and drops off as soon as the horn 
core (antler) is perfected. Between these two falls possibly the extinct 
Sivatherium and certainly falls the modern pronghorn. . . . This is an 
isolated case, but connects the giraffe and deer with the Bovidae, or proper 
'hollow-horned' ruminants (Cavicornia). In this family the males of every 
species, and in most cases the females also, possess upon the top of the skull 
protuberances of bone into which air cells often extend from the frontal 
sinuses. These are called 'horn cores,' and form the support of the cor- 
neous sheaths that cover and often extend far beyond them. They are 
not present at birth for obvious reasons, but begin to grow immediately 
afterwards. The horn sheaths grow with them, and continue even after 
they have reached normal size to push out at the 'base as fast as they wear 
away at the tip. Their form and position on the head is characteristic of 
each group : round and lateral in the oxen ; slender, retrocurved or twisted, 
and somewhat compressed or sharply keeled in most antelopes; heavy, 
cross-ridged, triangular in section and often spiral in the sheep and goats, 
and so on." 20 

The oxen are the most typical as well as important of the 
leading ruminant family Bovidae, and differ from the other 
genera by their stouter build and by the fact that their horns 
stand out from the sides of the skull, and are simply curved 
and smooth. No wild oxen inhabit South America, Madagas- 
car, or Australasia. 

The foremost species, now extinct as a wild animal but per- 
fectly traceable, is the original wild ox of Europe, the source 
of our farm cattle. It was much larger than any 

Aurochs. . . . 

existing breed, and bore immense horns, several of 
which, following the custom of the primitive Germans, were 
mounted in silver standards and long kept in European cities 
as ceremonial drinking horns. One of these, preserved almost 
to the nineteenth century at Zabern, near Strassburg, would 

238 



PRIMITIVE EUROPEAN OXEN 

hold three quarts; and other examples and records show that 
these horns sometimes exceeded six feet in length. Old bulls 
were black, but there is reason to suspect that the cows and 
calves may have been red. This great animal roamed through- 
out Europe and western Asia, and was counted among the 
fiercest of game in Caesar's time, who found it called ur or 




Ax Ox of the White British Park Cattle. 



auerochs; the former word was Latinized as urus, and the 
latter, when this ox had disappeared, became transferred to the 
bison. Even in Roman times the wild ox was growing scarce, 
and it died out early in the seventeenth century. Meanwhile, 
from prehistoric days, calves had been tamed by the peasantry, 
and such cattle as Europe and the Mediterranean basin gener- 
ally possessed were until quite recently little better than rough 
descendants of this captured stock. 

The so-called "wild white cattle" preserved in various British parks, 
and often described 215 are, according to Lydekker, 65 albino descendants of 
the tamed native black aurochs stock, of unknown antiquity, and are kept 

239 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

white (with black or reddish ears and muzzles) by weeding out the dark- 
colored calves which occasionally appear; but do not represent the original 
aurochs as well as do the Welsh breed preserved in Pembroke since pre- 
historic days. It is on record that anciently the Pembroke cattle were 
prevailingly black, but now most of them are yellowish, with the muzzle, 
inside of the ears, and often the fetlocks black. These park cattle are all 
of moderate size, elegantly shaped, with soft hair, white, black-tipped horns 
of moderate length, and many wild traits. From such stock have arisen 
all the domestic cattle of Christendom. 

In India and the farther East there live four species of wild 
oxen nearly related to the aurochs — heavy animals with mas- 
sive, upcurved horns, rather flattened in front, and 
twenty to thirty inches long, a ridgelike spine, and 
a very short tail. The bulls are brownish black, the cows and 
young paler, and both sexes have white "stockings." The hair 

is soft, fine, and glossy. The 
gaur is the finest of the three, 
a big bull standing six feet 
high, but the cows are smaller. 
It inhabits all the hill jungles 
of India, Burma, and the 
Malayan Peninsula ; is known 
to the Malays as "sladang"; 
and is one of the foremost 
game animals of the East, 
and the books of nearly every 
A gaur bull. sportsman-author in that part 

of the world recount exciting and perilous encounters with it, 
and usually, also, miscall it "bison." The biographies by San- 
derson 162 and by Pollok 156 are perhaps the most satisfactory. 

Reports of this animal's behavior toward the hunter show a great 
variety of temperament and action. Some sportsmen pronounce gaurs 
extremely dangerous to meet in the jungle, — others not at all so. The 
difference of view and experience is shown in accounts given me by two 
personal friends, — Casper Whitney and William T. Hornaday. The 

240 




GAUR % GAYAL, AXD BAN TEN G 

former declares sladang in the Malay Peninsula the most formidable quarry 
on earth. "In India, where the range of the gaur is the hilly, wooded districts, 
they are more apt to be found in herds of some size, and, because of the more 
open sections, less difficult of approach, and less dangerous to the hunter. 
In Malaya it is snap shooting, where the game, on being wounded, turns 
hunter, and, concealed, awaits the sportsman, who must approach with 
infinite caution, with senses always alert, and hand ever ready if he would 
stop or turn aside the vicious charge." It was in that region that Colonel 
Sayres was tossed and killed by a wounded bull gaur. 

On the other hand, Mr. Hornaday tells me that in India he has shot five 
bulls and three cows. " Not one of them manifested the slightest disposi- 
tion to charge, nor did any of their companions. Outside of the excite- 
ment of the chase, I found the actual killing of ' bison ' no more dangerous 
than shooting Texas cattle. Of course when wounded and closely cornered 
they will charge." 

The gayal or mithan is a smaller, milder sort, little known 

except as a scmidomestic race kept for the sake of meat by the 

hill tribes of northeastern India and Assam ; it does, 

Gayal. 
however, occur wild in Tenasserim. A third species, - 

the banteng or tsine, occurs both wild and tame throughout 

Burma and down to Borneo, large herds being kept by Malays 

in Java and Bali. Its haunts and habits are those of the gaur, 

from which it differs in being slighter, less ridged along the 

back, and in other particulars giving it a resemblance to the 

aurochs. The bulls are black, but the cows are reddish brown, 

like the young, and both sexes are distinguished by a large 

white patch on the hindquarters. As in the case of the other 

species, domestic races interbreed and also cross successfully 

with the Indian humped cattle. This latter curious animal, 

characterized by the fatty hump over the fore shoulders, a 

convex forehead, large, drooping ears, an enormous dewlap, and 

sloping haunches, is now known only by domestic races, and no 

one can say what was its true form as a wild species or where 

was its original home. 

"While the largest individuals," says Lydekker, who knew them well, 
"stand as high as a buffalo, the smallest are but little taller than a calf of a 
R 241 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

month old. The most common color is a light ashy gray, which may shade 
off into cream color, or even milk-white; but various tints of red or brown 
are often met with, and occasionally black individuals are seen. In dis- 
position these cattle are always gentle, and the larger varieties are employed 
in India for drawing native carriages. The voice of the humped cattle is 
more of a grunt than a low ; and these animals differ from European cattle 
in habits, insomuch as they but seldom seek the shade, and never stand 
knee-deep in water." 

In a most entertaining chapter of the 'elder Kipling's book, 
" Beast and Man in India," n we get a graphic picture of the 
cow as the servant and friend of the Hindoo, and the venerated 
symbol of the most precious cult in his religion. 

" The peculiar sanctity of the animal may be a degradation of a poetical 
Aryan idea, and the cow — originally used as a symbol of the clouds attend- 

S nctit of ant on ^ e sun &°d — ma y nave succee ded by a process of 
Cow in materialization to honors for which she was not intended, 

n ia but she is now firmly enthroned in the Hindoo pantheon. . . . 

" Though there is a bewildering variety of local breeds, some broad dif- 
ferences may be easily learned. The backward slope of the horns of the 
large and small breeds of Mysore cattle, — perhaps the most popular type 
in use, — the royal bearing of the splendid white and fawn oxen of Guzerat, 
and transport and artillery cattle bred in the government farms, at once 
strike the eye. These are the aristocrats of the race, but they have appe- 
tites proportioned to their size, and are too costly for the ordinary culti- 
vator. . . . On the wide alluvial plains, where the people are thickly planted, 
a small, slender, and colorless cow seems to be the usual poor man's animal. 
The well-to-do keep breeds with foreign names and of stouter build. On 
the great basin of volcanic trap or basalt, which includes much of western 
India, the cattle are more square in shape, large in bone, and varied in color. 
" The richer pastures and cold winters of Kashmir and the hill country 
near develop a sturdy, square-headed, short-legged race, with a coarse 
coat like that of the English cow. In the Himalaya, where the grass is 
deficient in nourishing power, there are breeds of tiny, neatly formed ani- 
mals, with coats that look like black or brown cotton velvet. These pasture 
on the mountain side, climbing almost as cleverly as goats, and their graz- 
ing paths, trodden for centuries, have covered leagues of steep slope with 
a scale-work pattern of wonderful regularity when seen from afar; . . . but 
the beast at its best is a true Itindoo of the plains." 

242 



EAST INDIAN CATTLE 



Much relating to bull and cow worship may be found in Gubernatis's 
"Zoological Mythology." 208 

The humped cattle are also used in China, Madagascar, and 
eastern-central Africa; and the ordinary Galla or "sunga" ox 
of Abyssinia is a big variety with enormous horns, which a 
German authority, Professor Rutimeyer, thought closely allied 
to the banteng. Fossil great-horned species of gigantic pro- 
portions occur in the recent deposits of both Europe and India. 

The forests of Celebes contain an extraordinary little wild 
cow (sapi-utan), the anoa, not much bigger than a goat, with 
a soft brown coat and straight triangular horns Anoa and 
pointing backward. It is of no service except as Tamarao - 
food. A somewhat larger relative, or perhaps a hybrid between 
it and something else, is the tamarao of the Philippine Islands. 



This interesting little animal was first brought to scientific notice by an 
American collector, J. B. Steere, in Mindoro, who gave an illustrated 
account of the matter in The American Naturalist for 1891. A bull is about 
the size of a small Jersey cow, but lower and 
heavier, with a swollen appearance about both 
body and limbs. "It was lead-black in color, 
with lighter markings on head, legs, and under 
parts, with thin, short hair, a little switchlike 
tail, like a swine, and nearly straight, sharp, 
black horns, which ran upward and backward, 
spreading but little more than the width of the 
head, and being in line at the tip with the nose 
and eye. This narrowness and backward set 
of the horns gave the animal a peculiar look, 
but must be especially fitted for crowding its way through the wild vines and 
canebrakes. . . . The skin was of immense thickness, and was entirely cov- 
ered with gore marks of many battles." The cows are about as large as the 
bulls, and calves are chestnut in color. "We found them," says Steere, 
"chiefly living in canebrakes, upon the young shoots of which they were 
feeding. At night they would gather in some numbers along the open 
beaches of the river. During the morning they would feed solitarily, or lie 
in the mud and water of the small streams, and later in the day would take 

243 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

refuge under certain trees, whose branches drooped to the ground, forming 
an almost impenetrable shelter." 

This introduces us to the true buffaloes, — a section of tropical 
cattle, usually heavily built, with massive, flattened, wrinkled 
Indian horns rising from the forehead, and the hair so thin 

Buffalo. foot in old animals the bluish black skin is left al- 
most naked. The typical buffalo is that native to India and 
Ceylon, where it formerly roved in herds, which, quickly form- 
ing into a compact bunch, heads and horns out, defied attack 
from even the lion or tiger. Bulls often exceed five feet in 
height, are bulky, extremely strong and yet quick, and carry 
rough horns, sweeping back circularly, which may measure 
twelve feet around the curve. Such a veteran herd master 
spends his days wallowing in marshy jungles, his broad, splayed 
hoofs sustaining him in the muddy soil, and his hairless back, 
coated with clay, proof against insects ; but evenings and morn- 
ings he leads his band out to feed in lush prairies where the 
grass is tall enough to hide them. 

Sportsmen agree that no game animal is more dangerous than a bull 
buffalo, for it is not only likely to attack one unprovoked, but nothing but 
death will stop its rush. "A buffalo," declares Baker, 147 "if not killed, 
will assuredly destroy its adversary. There is no creature in existence that 
is so determined to stamp out the life of its opponents, and the intensity of 
fury is unsurpassed when a wounded bull buffalo rushes forward upon the 
last desperate charge." The bloody history of both East Indian and 
African sport is filled with practical evidence of the truth of this statement. 
Pugnacity and revenge seem the animal's ruling impulses, and tremendous 
fights constantly take place between rival bulls and with other animals. 
Blanford says instances are known of elephants being knocked down, and 
of tigers caught, tossed, and then trampled. The half-wild herd bulls are 
nearly as vicious as those of the jungle; and a favorite sport of Indian 
princes was to pit two in the bull-ring or against a captive tiger or bear. 
Nevertheless, this buffalo has long been domesticated, first on the Indian 
plains in prehistoric times, and is greatly esteemed for qualities in which 
the humped cattle are deficient. Oriental husbandry needs both; but 
while the buffalo is made use of, it gets none of the affectionate respect 

244 



''IT'!"* Mil 




2 4S 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

with which the sleek and handsome cow is regarded. In the religious my- 
thology of that imaginative population it figures in gloomy and forbidding 
episodes. 

This animal is highly valued throughout the East wherever rice is cul- 
tivated, and the Philippine carabao is a small variety of it. Egypt re- 
ceived it very long ago, and will spread it southward, since it is adapted to 
the hot lowlands now being brought under cultivation in the Sudan, and 
likes coarse aquatic vegetation better than dry-land forage ; hence it has 
long thriven and proved useful in the Niger Valley. It was introduced into 
Italy for labor in the northern marsh districts several hundred years ago, 
and serves well in Spain, Turkey, and elsewhere in the West. 

Africa has native buffaloes of much the same character in two 
species, neither of which has been found domesticable. Both 
African are g rowm g rare even in remote districts, chiefly 
Buffaloes. through the ravages of rinderpest. The South 
African buffalo is nearly equal in size and appearance to the 
Indian one, but its horns are somewhat shorter and their bases 
nearly meet in a broad, flattened "buckler" over the forehead. 
These buffaloes, too, frequent marshes and rivers, wading about 
and eating aquatic plants. Their sense of smell is remarkably 
keen, and they are further warned of the approach of a dis- 
turber by the buffalo birds or ox peckers, a kind of starling 
that remain near them with untiring vigilance. Similarly in 
the East, cattle are attended both by starlings and small 
herons, which perch on their backs and hunt for ticks and other 
parasites. The African buffalo, like his Indian brother, has 
the distinction of being regarded as perhaps the most danger- 
ous brute a sportsman can meet in that land of dangerous 
beasts, and the literature of African hunting makes good this 
reputation. Only rarely will even the lion attack one single- 
handed, and then seldom succeeds. 

The West African species is smaller, has shorter and less 
massive horns, and is ruddy brown in color. 

Strangest of the ox tribe is the yak of Tibet and the high 
Himalaya. In its wild state, on the lofty plateaus, it is a huge 

246 



YAKS, AND YAK HUNTING 

and graceful animal capable of fighting off the packs of wolves 
that in winter haunt its trail by means of its spreading, smooth, 
and sharp horns. It has a massive form with short 

Yak. 

legs and goatlike feet. The shoulders are some- 
what humped, and the head is carried low. On both body 
and head the hair is short, but from the chin, throat, and lower 
parts of the sides, it grows very long, forming a shining fringe 
or valance, which serves as a mat under the animal when it 
lies down upon the snow or icy rocks, and a warm blanket be- 
neath which to curl its legs — a striking adaptation to the cli- 
mate in which it lives. The color in summer is dark brown, 
growing grizzled with age, and lighter in winter. The tail is 
sometimes six feet long, thick and silky; and these tails are in 
demand as ornaments and for the fly whisks so necessary in 
the East, often fancifully mounted on antelope-horn handles. 
Wild yaks range throughout the loftier regions of central 
Asia, keeping near the snow line in the mountains, and pastur- 
ing on the tough wiry grass which grows luxuriantly in the ele- 
vated valleys. Vast numbers still inhabit the Tibetan solitudes, 
sometimes gathered into herds of thousands. Pere Hue, who 
was the first to describe the wild yak, says the name is Tibetan 
and imitative of the animal's cry — "very much like the grunt 
of a pig, but louder and more prolonged." Few are the men 
who have added the head of this noble ox to their hunting 
trophies, for it is on the almost unreachable flanks and plateaus 
of the Pamir that yak hunting must be followed. 

Tame yaks have long been used throughout central Asia, and many 
breeds of various sizes and colors are known. Strong and surefooted, it 
is a beast of burden where none other can exist, and invaluable for mountain 
traveling, but trying for Europeans, since its pace rocks its rider to and 
fro as if on ship in a cross sea. "The going was awful," writes one mis- 
erable traveler, "stony and very steep; but the yak never made a mistake, 
though it puffed and blew and grunted a great deal. Its gait is very slow, 
nor can it be urged faster, nor kept from stopping as often as it pleases to 
eat snow, of which it consumes surprising quantities." Wilson's "Abode 

*47 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

of Snow" is full of yak riding; and General Macintyre groans over many a 
bone-racking experience. Hue tells us that he saw whole droves with loads 
on their backs sliding down frozen slopes on their haunches. The 
flesh, he says, is excellent, the milk of the cow delicious, and the butter 
made from it above all praise; but "the cows are so difficult to milk that it 
is impossible to keep them still ; and not a drop is to be had from them with- 
out giving them their calves to lick during the operation." From the hides 
clothing, tent covers, and harness are made; and from the hair is twisted 
a rope of remarkable strength and elasticity. 

From this animal we pass readily to the bisons, the last of 
the wild cattle. These are the forest oxen of Europe and the 
" buffalo" of our plains. 

The word "bison" has been greatly misused. It is an English corrup- 
tion of wisent, the proper German name of the big, humped, shaggy- 
browed oxen which people came carelessly to call "aurochs," after the true 
aurochs had disappeared; but when the English went to India, and met 
there a formidable wild ox (the gaur), they called it "bison," while, with 
heedless inconsistency, they dubbed a true bison, when they found it in 
America, the "buffalo." 

Bisons differ from other oxen mainly in having over the 
withers a hump formed by spines rising from the backbone to 
give attachment to the great muscles needed to hold 
up the head, and this gives a droop to the hind- 
quarters ; they also have fourteen instead of thirteen ribs. The 
forehead is convex and protected by a thick mop of hair, the 
service of which seems to be to act as a cushion in the tremen- 
dous pushing matches which the bulls wage with each other, in 
fencing for a chance to make play with their short and power- 
ful horns, against which the masses of long hair on the shoulders 
are a still further guard. The more peaceable cows are far less 
shaggy and of smaller size. This description applies in the 
main to both European and American bisons, which are prob- 
ably mere local races descended from an identical stock. The 
color of both is dark red brown, much faded in late summer. 

Three fossil species were recognized by Dr. J. A. Allen in his classic 
monograph. 217 One (Bison priscus) is a very large, long-horned species, 

248 



THE EUROPEAN BISON 

widely distributed in the Pleistocene formations of Europe. Another 
closely similar fossil (Bison anliquus) is found in northern America, and 
the two were perhaps local races of a then circumpolar species, direct an- 
cestor of the modern forms. The third is Bison latifrons, a more ancient 
type of gigantic size, with horns that must have spread ten or twelve feet. 
Additional fossil species have since been described. 

The wisent (or "zubr," as it is known to Slavic-speaking men) 
was once widely distributed over Europe and neighboring parts 
of Asia, except on the Russian steppes, but was 
gradually exterminated, until long ago all that re- 
mained were small herds in the Lithuanian forests and in the 
Caucasus, which were protected on imperial estates, and now 
number less than one thousand individuals. It is a wild, shy, 
pugnacious, forest-keeping animal, living mainly on leaves and 
twigs, not gathering in large companies, nor capable of useful 
domestication, nor have crosses between it and other cattle 
yielded encouraging results. A fine pair were living in the 
New York Zoological Park in 1905. 

The American bison or buffalo is perhaps on the average not 
so tall, but more robust and shaggy than the wisent ; its life, 
however, was in great contrast to that of its Euro- American 
pean relative. Our bison belonged to plains and Bison - 
prairies; and although some penetrated the forests east 
to the heights of the Alleghanies, and roamed in the West 
throughout the wooded Rockies, the great body were 
grazers, and kept to the plains — the bunch-grass country — 
from Great Slave Lake southward to the Texas coast and the 
northern interior of Mexico, and as far west as eastern Utah 
and Nevada. 

In this open country, where family bands could sight one 
another, and were naturally attracted together, and where 
wolves forced them to combine for common security, gregarious 
habits foreign to their sylvan ancestors were inevitably formed; 
and latterly enormous herds congregated during the spring and 

249 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

fall when climate and pasturage compelled annual migratory 
movements, particularly in the north. Ordinarily, however, 
these vast assemblages were much scattered, and the bands 
composing them had a habit of keeping each by itself, and 
moving in single file, so that in the early days the plains were 
marked by innumerable paths worn by their feet, especially 
distinct where leading to and from watering places or fords, or 











Graphic History of the Disappearance of the American Bison. 



over mountain passes; and the early "pathfinders" of the 
Rockies had nothing to do but follow them. The speed and 
agility of these heavy beasts (an old bull would weigh a ton) 
were astonishing ; 219 they also swam well, and the present 
writer M has seen scores of them crossing the upper Missouri 
by swimming. Another interesting feature of this animal was 
its harmlessness. It never, or rarely, charged, and hunters on 
foot or on horseback entered the herds, and approached solitary 
and even wounded bulls, with no more than ordinary precau- 

250 



SHEEP AND GOATS 

tions, since, despite the pawing and snorting, little serious 
action would follow. 

This behavior, so much in contrast to that of other kinds of 
wild bulls, is explained, of course, by their gregarious instincts, 
leading them to gather in a bunch for safety against danger, 
but also by the fact that there were on the American plains no 
such powerful beasts of prey as menace African and Asiatic 
cattle. Hence individual defensive action was not bred in our 
bisons as it was in the Old World oxen. 

This enormous national asset of beef cattle, upon which the Indian 
population of the West almost wholly depended for food and clothing, has 
been swept away within a century. A careful investigation in 1904 dis- 
covered about twelve hundred then living in the parks of the world, while 
a few are protected, though at large, in northwestern Colorado and in 
Yellowstone Park, and perhaps four hundred still exist in the rough, wooded 
country west of Great Slave Lake. A full history of the decline and destruc- 
tion of this fine animal has been written by William T. Hornaday. 218 

Next follow the sheep and goats, with little in structure to 
distinguish between them or to separate them from the oxen, 
though it is easy enough to recognize the three Sh and 
apart in the field. Sheep are smaller than cattle Goats - 
generally, and the males have massive horns (the females much 
smaller ones), usually triangular in 
section, rough, cross-wrinkled, and 
tending to coil beside the head into 
a "ram's-horn" spiral. A distinc- 
tive feature is a small gland in each 
foot between the hoofs; and the 
ewes have but two teats. The rams 
are devoid of any strong odor, and 
have no beard. "As regards the 

& OORIAL OR SHA. 

character of their molar teeth, the 

sheep resemble the gazelles, and it is accordingly not improb- 
able that they may trace their descent to extinct antelopes more 

251 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

or less allied to that group." They are younger than the oxen, 
geologically. Sheep are naturally mountain dwellers, their round, 
firm hoofs, their warm winter undercoats, cultivated in domestic 
races into a heavy fleece, their ability to exist on scant herbage, 
and their keen senses are all adaptations to an alpine life and 
cold climate. Hence we find no wild sheep except on moun- 
tain ranges, and, in fact, only on those forming the " backbone" 
of central Europe and Asia and extending along the western 
side of North America. There are high mountains elsewhere, 
but the sheep seem never to have crossed the intervening 
forested lowlands. 

The species longest and best known is the mouflon of Cor- 
sica and Sardinia, still an object of the chase in the mountains 
of those islands, but frequently found by the shep- 

Mouflon. - J r 

herds with their flocks, and probably one of the 
sources of European domestic sheep. 

As to the originals of this perhaps most valuable and least educated of 
the animals reclaimed from nature, we are in the dark ; it is probable that, 
like dogs, they came from the taming of local species of various regions, 
and have modified by mixture as well as by breeding. The oldest definitely 
known is the "peat sheep" of the early Swiss lake dwellers, which was a 
small-horned breed, apparently represented at the present day by the sheep 
of Graubinden, Germany; but at a somewhat later time the Copper-age 
people of France and the British Isles had a big-horned sheep with a strong 
infusion of mouflon blood. "The variations of external characters seen 
in the different domestic breeds are very great. They are chiefly manifested 
in the form and number of the horns, which may be increased from the 
normal two to four or even eight, or may be altogether absent in the female 
alone, or in both sexes; in the form and length of the ears, which often 
hang pendant by the side of the head ; in the peculiar elevation or arching 
of the nasal bones in some Eastern races ; in the length of the tail and the 
development of great masses of fat at each side of its root, or in the tail 
itself; and in the color and quality of the fleece." 

Asia Minor and Persia have a mouflon similar to the Cor- 
sican one but larger ; and a diminutive variety inhabits Cyprus, 
or formerly did so. India's only wild sheep is the oorial ("sha" 

252 



00 RIAL AND GULJAR 

in Ladak), a tall, rather lean reddish gray species, found from 
the Punjab to eastern Persia and from northern Tibet to 
Beluchistan, and this great variety of habitat has produced an 
equal variety of size and form. It will interbreed with domes- 
tic sheep, and has no doubt entered largely into the parentage 
of the Asiatic flocks. 

Although every sportsman who visits the Himalaya has a 
shot at oorial, which are active and wary, awakening the echoes 
with shrill alarm whistles when the hunter fancies they have 
no idea of his approach, a more creditable game is the great 
guljar, or Marco Polo's sheep, of the Pamirs. In p i > s 
summer it roams in the grassy valleys fifteen thou- Sheep, 
sand to eighteen thousand feet above the sea, cropping the 
young herbage springing at the edge of the melting snow fields, 
but in winter must retreat to lower levels. Old rams are nearly 
white, and carry circling horns which may measure sixty inches 
around the outside curve. 

What it means to hunt these and other mountain sheep and goats may 
be learned by reading the books of Himalayan sportsmen. An experience 
by Captain R. P. Cobbold in 1897 may serve as an example. He had climbed 
on yaks with Kirghiz companions to treeless valleys on the Pamir about 
thirteen thousand in altitude, where at that season (late October) the mer- 
cury fell at night below zero; and before dawn, one morning, he began a 
heart-breaking tramp over steep ridges in search of the game. When it 
became light enough to see anything, certain animals were discovered 
through field glasses on the opposite hillsides. 

"After half an hour's stiffish uphill work, we got to the plateau where the 
creatures had been feeding, but they had gone. Looking up, I saw they 
were ibex, and some fine heads among them ; but I did not want ibex, as 
I had shot them before, so I did not bother about them ; they went up into 
some rocky cliffs, playing and butting each other, and kicking down stones. 
. . . We descended halfway, and then had a look around from behind some 
rocks on to the hillside and the Pamir below. It was getting pretty good 
light now, and I made out two white ponies about two hundred yards off; 
at least, that is what they looked like to me. I thought it rather odd that 
the Kirghiz should leave their ponies to wander so high up, so I called 

253 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Mirza Bai's attention to them, when he immediately dropped like a stone, 
and, dragging me down, whispered, 'Guljar, sahib.' I got the rifle ready; 
but they had our wind, and scampered off. 

"We continued watching the two large poli, which were half a mile or 
so distant. They kept turning their heads up towards the rocks behind 
which we were, and the appearance their long, curving horns gave them 
was most weird. After a bit, they fed down into the bed of the ravine, and 

then, as we were hidden by its 
banks from sight, down we went, 
as hard as we could go. Care- 
fully we crept up, I walking in 
moccasins ; but when we looked 
over they were gone. We went 
up the ravine a little way, and 
then saw them going slowly up 
the nullah about two hundred 
yards off. It was bare and stony 
going, and no cover; so it was 
useless following them. I and 
Mirza Bai then took counsel as 
to what was best to be done, not 
that either of us could under- 
stand the other, as I cannot 
understand Turki, nor he Hin- 
dustani. However, by means of 
signs, I made him understand 
that we must climb up to the 
top of the ridge, and follow it 
along to the head of the nullah 
and then down, and hope to find 
some projecting cliffs to give us 
cover. It was tiring work, all shingle, which kept on slipping and giving 
to one's feet; and then, when we got to what had looked like the top from 
below, we found that there was lots more still to climb. This happened 
over and over again. At last, however, we got to the real top of the ridge 
and followed it along to the head of the nullah, every now and then care- 
fully looking down to see if the poli were still there. At the head of the 
nullah there was a nasty descent ; but some projecting cliffs gave us cover 
and we got down all right, and proceeded cautiously toward the spot where 
we had last seen the guljar lying. It was impossible to walk anything like 

254 




Guljar or Polo's Sheep. 



ARGALI AND BIGHORNS 

quietly, as the nullah was a mass of broken rock and shingle, which kept 
clattering down however carefully one stepped. 

"I noticed that the wind had changed and was now blowing up the 
nullah towards us; and I wondered if the Kirghiz, who had been left near 
the entrance of the nullah, had had the sense to move further away, or if 
the guljar would get his wind. Sure enough, they had, as I saw them com- 
ing up the nullah towards us in a rare hurry. We squatted among the 
stones, and I saw that with any luck they must pass not more than a 
hundred yards away. I got the Mannlicher ready, and covered the whiter 
animal of the two. They came on at a gallop; but as the ascent began to 
tell on their heavy bodies they stopped opposite me for a moment. I 
dropped the big beast dead; the other one made off for the opposite side 
of the nullah; I missed him the second shot, and then putting up the 
200-yards sight, dropped him dead with the third shot. Mirza Bai was in 
a frantic state of delight, and, seizing my hand, kissed it vigorously, mur- 
muring, 'Atcha, sahib!' and many endearing epithets which I did not 
understand." — Innermost Asia (New York, 1900). 



Inhabiting all these high ranges from Turkestan to Mongo- 
lia, is another magnificent sheep, the argali, ammon or nyan, 
which offers so many variations that it figures in 
books under many local and scientific names ; but 
all varieties seem to blend, and it is not at all certain that it 
even differs specifically from the guljar. 

Last of the typical sheep are the various " bighorns," if indeed 
more than one species locally diversified by climate and other 
circumstances can be counted ; these are the Rocky _. , 

J Bighorn. 

Mountain, Alaskan, and Kamchatkan sheep. Our 
bighorn, which until about 1884 was considered as only a single 
species (Ovis montana), is the one long familiar to us through- 
out the Rocky Mountain region, from the head of the Rio 
Grande to central British Columbia, but not in California 
or Oregon. From central California southward into the 
lower peninsula is found Nelson's sheep; and in the northerly 
sierras of Mexico a Mexican species. Now to the northward 
of the bighorn range occur three kinds of mountain sheep, 

255 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



regarded by Merriam, Hornaday, 222 and other American natu- 
ralists as distinct species, as follows : — 




Rocky Mountain Bighorn. 

(i) Stone's, — somewhat smaller than the bighorn; light colored when 
young, dark in maturity, with a nearly black dorsal stripe, and wide-spread- 
ing horns grooved along the side; it makes its home on the snowy ranges 
between the heads of the Stikeen and the Yukon. (2) Fannin's or "saddle- 

256 




BHARAL AND AOUDAD 

back," — white except the back and sides, where the color is faintly brownish 
gray, "giving the appearance of a white animal covered by a gray blanket"; 
it inhabits the Rocky Mountains between the Yukon and the Mackenzie. 
(3) Alaskan While or DaWs, — a little 
smaller than the bighorn, "everywhere 
milk-white, both in winter and in sum- 
mer, and from birth to old age"; it 
seems to be a tenant of all the 
mountain ranges north of the sixtieth 
parallel, from the Rocky Mountains 
to the Alaskan and arctic coasts. Its 
horns are rather lighter both in weight Head of Stone . s SHIiEP . 

and color than those of the others, and 

most resemble those of the Kamchatkan sheep (its neighbor just across 
Bering Strait) which is described as "brown gray, the head and neck 
rather grayer than the rest of the body." 

The hunting of these sheep, nowadays, at least, taxes a man's 
wind and endurance, his sure-footedness, skill in stalking, and 
ability to shoot straight, 219 beyond that of any other game ; but 
twenty-five years ago it was not so difficult to get near them. 
In 1874, and again in 1877, I watched at ease many bands 
among the high valleys and cliffs of Colorado and Wyoming — 
fifty in a flock sometimes. 

The blue sheep, bharal or nahura of Tibet, represents 
another type, having horns nearly smooth, and curved more 
like an S than in a coil; and the fur is smooth, Bharal 
close, and strikingly marked about the face and andAoudad - 
front. Still more intermediate between sheep and goats stands 
the familiar North African pale brown aoudad, as the Moors 
call it (it has many other names), which, like the bharal, has 
horns curving backward from the middle of the occiput, and 
about twenty-four inches long. Its most striking peculiarity, 
however, is the fringe of very long whitish hair on the throat, 
chest, and about the fore legs. 

These odd animals are common in the Atlas, where they range over 
the more precipitous regions of its arid southern slopes from the Atlantic 
s 257 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

to Tunis, keeping within sight of the desert; and Buxton, 223 who has told 
us much that was novel in regard to the animals of the Sahara and Atlas 
regions, speaks feelingly of their remarkable skill in hiding among the fan- 
tastically worn and brushy rocks of those mountains. All mountain sheep 
and goats know how to stand absolutely motionless and unnoticeable, or 
to lie quietly beside a rock with which their dun hue perfectly blends. 
One or more of a band is likely to choose some high place commanding a 
wide outlook, and so is prepared to catch sight of anything alarming in 
the neighborhood; but the " posting of sentinels," so frequently stated of 
these animals, probably amounts to no more than this habitual watchful- 
ness by wakeful ones. 

Goats differ from the sheep in such small particulars as the 
absence of hoof glands, the rank odor and beard of the rams, 
and in the shape of the horns, which typically are 
high, sweeping, and triangular, and are likely to be 
knobbed on the front. Standing about as high as the average 
wild sheep, say three feet at the shoulder, the goats are rather 
lighter in weight, more active climbers, and are likely to be found 
in more precipitous parts of the mountain system to which they, 
like the sheep, are confined, for no true goat now occurs naturally 
outside of Europe and Asia, except along the Egyptian shore 
of the Red Sea. Geologically, they have been traced back to 
the Pliocene, when an ibex wandered over the chilly plains of 
central Europe ; but since the Glacial period they have remained 
upon alpine heights, separating into various closely related 
species by the influence of isolation. Goats are further peculiar 
in being mostly browsers, cropping the leaves and twigs of 
brush, sprouts, and aromatic plants ; hence flocks of tame goats 
not only keep the woods where they run free from undergrowth, 
but ruin any attempt to reforest areas once cut over. 

Nearest to the sheep, and with the bharal and aoudad uniting 
the two groups, are the brownish turs of the Cau- 
casus, whose massive black horns are comparatively 
smooth and cylindrical, and extend outward and backward like 
those of the bharal. Very similar are the goats of the moun- 

258 



PERSIAN WILD GOAT 



tains of Spain, though the horns of the rams are more angulated, 
rough, and twisting. As with most game, the old bucks are 
solitary most of the year, and stay on the high, cold peaks, but 
in the late autumn they seek the company of the does, and then 
large flocks often gather. The does are likely to winter in the 
lower and more sheltered valleys, and the kids (two, as a rule, 
as elsewhere in this family) are born in April. All are so ex- 
tremely alert, and so agile in climbing and hiding, that, al- 
though constantly hunted since prehistoric times, goats are 
numerous all over the Iberian peninsula. 

Between this and the ibexes comes the common wild goat 
of Persia, which occurs on all the highlands from Crete to the 
barren hills of Cutch, and is the original of domes- Bezoar 
tic breeds. Its coat in winter is brownish gray, in Goat - 
summer more reddish, with the buttocks and under parts 
nearly white; while the older bucks have the forehead, chin, 
beard, throat, front of the ...,-,-- 

legs, a stripe along the spine, 
the tail, and a band on the 
flanks dark brown. The 
horns of the old bucks 
measure forty to fifty inches 
along the curve, rise close 
together from the top of the 
skull, and sweep backward in 
an even curve, with the front 
edge forming a strong keel 
marked by irregular promi- 
nences; the horns of the 
smoother. 

This goat, from whose stomach are taken the best bezoars 
("pasan"), formerly so highly valued in medicine, and which 
was the one familiar to the classical and biblical authors, and 
supplied much of the repulsive mythology with which its race 

259 




Ram of Persian, or Bezoar, Goat. 
female are much smaller and 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

is connected, 208 is a favorite game animal in its region, especially 
on the Elburz range. 224 

"The relations of the goat to mankind," remarks Shaler, "are in cer- 
tain ways peculiar. The creature has long been subjugated, probably 
Domestic having come into the human family before the dawn of his- 
Goat. tory. It has been almost as widely disseminated among bar- 

barian and civilized peoples alike as the sheep. It readily cleaves to the 
household and exhibits much more intelligence than the other members 
of our flocks and herds. It yields good milk, the flesh is edible, though 
in the old animals not savory, and the hair can be made to vary in a larger 
measure than any of our animals which are shorn. Yet this creature has 
never obtained the place in relation to man to which it seems entitled. 
Only here and there is it kept in considerable numbers or made the basis 
of extensive industries. The reason for this seems to be that these ani- 
mals cannot readily be kept in flocks in the manner of sheep. . . . There 
seems reason to believe, also, that they cannot easily be made to vary in other 
characteristics except their hairy covering at the wil 1 of the breeder, and so 
varieties cannot be formed. . . . The present rapid variations in the physi- 
cal characteristics of our sheep, which are induced by the breeder's skill, 
make it evident that we are far from having attained the maximum profit 
from these creatures. The goats also give promise, when selective work 
is carefully done upon them, of giving much more than they now afford to 
the uses of mankind; but from neither of these forms is there reason to 
hope ... for any considerable gain in the intellectual qualities." 2 * 25 

This brings us to the ibexes, which are simply large wild 
goats with horns that stand nearly straight up in a scimiter- 

like curve, and have heavy ridges across the front. 

The ibex proper, the bouquetin of the French and 
steinbok of the Germans, once roamed throughout the Alps, 
but now remains only as a few preserved specimens in the 
Piedmont valleys. Two other species inhabit Abyssinia and 
the rough heights of Syria ; but the finest ibex is the Himalayan, 
standing forty inches tall, and having horns sometimes fifty 
inches long. These dwell upon the heights of all central Asia, 
and maintain themselves in goodly numbers in spite of wild 
dogs, leopards, hunters, and avalanches. The same mountains 

260 



HIM ALA \ 'A X MA R KHOR 



are the home of the markhor, — a light-colored goat which 
dwells among the gigantic peaks of the "roof of the world" 
on the northern border of Kashmir, and is believed to be the 
parent, at least in part, of the valuable Angora goat. 



"It is the finest of all wild goats," exclaims Hornaday, in an article in 
Scribticr's Magazine for September, 1905, describing heads and horns of 
game in his own very notable collection of such trophies in 
Xew York, "and in every respect a very picturesque creature. 
Its jet-black horns rise jauntily from the forehead, then sweep backward 
and outward, twisting as they go, until they make a complete turn, or even 
two turns, and attain a length of from forty-eight to sixty inches. Under its 
neck hangs an aston- 
ishing mane of creamy 
yellow hair a foot long, 
and the body coat also 
is long and shaggy. 

"To some persons, 
doubtless, a pair of 
markhor horns are 
merely a pair of odd- 
looking, screwlik e 
horns, and nothing 
more. To others they 
call up pictures of 
snowy peaks, wet and 
soggy clouds drift- 
ing by, tremendous 
chasms, rock walls 
going down thousands 
of feet, shaggy-headed, 
wild-looking natives 
with chocolate-colored 
skins, and tiny villages 
of mud huts perched like sea birds' nests on frightful ledges. And then 
one thinks of the journey down, drop after drop, to hill, forest, and plain ; 
the bazaar on the frontier, the bazaar 'down country'; through a dozen 
hands and half a dozen languages, until at last they reach a white sahib 
thousands of miles away." 

261 




Cr.p 



. Zool. Society. 

A Young Markhor 



Ram. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Beyond these monarchs of the land in the sky stand the goat- 
antelopes, so called because they unite in some degree the two 
Goat-an- groups represented in the name. They are small, 
telopes. robust, active animals with rather long and woolly 
coats, short, inconspicuous, upright horns, no beards, and goat- 
like haunts and habits. Examples are the shaggy brown tahrs 
of the mountains of India and Arabia; the ungraceful, pug- 




Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

One of the Shaggy Tahrs. 

nacious serows, several species of which are scattered over the 
highlands of southeastern Asia, including Japan; and the 
similar, but far rarer, takin of eastern Tibet, a heavily built 
animal with figure and horns not unlike those of a musk ox ; 
indeed, this may be more than an accidental resemblance, for 
in Beddard's opinion it is the nearest relative to that strange 
arctic animal, and its head is as much a prize to the collector 
of trophies. In this group also fall the chamois of Europe 
and the Rocky Mountain white goat. 

It is often an irritating incident of reading old books to run 
against the phrase, "too well known to be described," in respect 
to something the reader would like particularly well to learn; 
but I must ask for once to retreat behind it, and refer the reader 

262 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN WHITE GOAT 

to the encyclopedias, or, better, to such authors as Baillie- 
Grohman 227 for a history of the chamois. This will be more 
excusable, perhaps, if I add that the chamois (gemse, izard, 
or atchi), once numerous on high mountains from Spain to 
Greece and Persia, is now extinct as a wild animal west of 
Transylvania, except on a few baronial estates. 

Our western American pure white mountain goat is one of 
the most peculiar and to us the most interesting of the group — 
a "white buffalo" the Indians styled it, when they white 
reported it in British Columbia to Alexander Macken- Goat - 
zie on his approach to the Pacific coast in 1793 ; this is the oldest 
mention of it I have been able to find, and the next is the vague 
account furnished by the writers of the Lewis and Clark Ex- 
pedition. In place of a formal description of this mountain 
antelope (for he is no more a goat than is his "nearest of kin," 
the chamois), let me quote a portrait sketch by Owen Wister, 219 
who paints from life : — 

"He's white, all white, and shaggy, and twice as large as any goat you 
ever saw. His white hair hangs long all over him, like a Spitz dog's or an 
Angora cat's; . . . and against its shaggy white mass the blackness of 
his hoofs, and horns, and nose looks particularly black. His legs are 
thick, his neck is thick, everything about him is thick, saving only his thin 
black horns. They're generally about six [often more than nine] inches 
long, they spread very slightly, and they curve slightly backward. At their 
base they are a little rough, but as they rise they cylindrically smooth 
and taper to an ugly point. His hoofs are heavy, broad, and blunt. 
The female is lighter built than the male, and with horns more 
slender — a trifle. And (to return to the question of diet) we visited 
the pasture where the herd of (thirty-five) had been, and found no 
sign of grass growing or grass eaten ; there was no grass on that moun- 
tain. The only edible substance was a moss, tufted, stiff, and dry to the 
touch. ... I also learned that the goat is safe from predatory animals. 
With his impenetrable hide and his disembowelling horns, he is left by 
the wolves and mountain lions respectfully alone." 

The pelage of this goat is the softest and finest worn by any American 
hoofed mammal excepting the musk ox; but the hairs are coarser and 

263 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

stiffer along the spinal column. The wool was formerly formed into a 
sort of felted yarn by the Indians by teasing it and then rolling it under 
the palm on the bare thigh. 

The hunting of this animal requires climbing to the topmost 
heights of the most alpine of American mountains, unless one 
goes to Alaska, where the altitudes but scarcely the difficulties 




Rocky Mountain White Goats at Home. 

will be less. Its home is in the far Northwest, where the cli- 
mate is damp and the snowfall abundant. Nowadays it is not 
to be found south of northwestern Montana. In British Co- 
lumbia it is widely distributed from the eastern slope of the 
Rockies to Pacific tidewater; and it is abundant throughout 
southeastern Alaska. It is a singular fact that sheep and 
goats rarely live in the same range, or when they do never 
apparently on the same mountain. 

264 



MOUNTAIN GOATS AND SHEEP 

Hunting the white goat, says George Bird Grinnell, editor 
of Forest and Stream and of the Boone' and Crockett Club's 
excellent publications, is man's work, and "calls Goat 
for the best qualities of the mountaineer." When Hunting, 
the goats have once been found, however, it is usually easy to 
secure them, for they are gentle and unsuspicious. 

"The most charming, innocent creatures that I met in the Cascade 
Mountains were the white goats,'' writes Frederick Irland. "What do 
you think of a wild animal which, after he knows you are on his track, will 
stop and turn back, to peer around the corner and see what you are? 
These stately animals, with their long white aprons, coal-black 1 eyes, and 
sharp little horns, really seem to me too unsophisticated to shoot." "Al- 
though the goat is nearly related to the chamois," to quote again from Mr. 
Grinnell's narrative of a climb after these animals (Scribner's Magazine, 
Vol. XV), "it has little of the activity of that nimble species. The big- 
horn is the runner and jumper of the western mountains, while the goat 
is the plodder. He gets over the ground and climbs the loftiest peaks 'by 
main strength and awkwardness.' The bighorn rushes away along the 
mountain side at a headlong pace, the alarmed goat starts straight for the 
mountain top at a rate which seems slow, often no more than a walk, but 
which is so steady and continuous that it soon carries the animal out of 
the way of danger. 

"The goat is marvelously sure-footed, and from the day of its birth 
is practiced in climbing over the rocks, but it must not be imagined that it 
never falls from the insecure perches which it frequents. Such falls are 
not uncommon, but seem rarely to result in serious injury. Kids which 
have been captured when very young and kept in captivity have been ob- 
served to play at rolling down steep banks, repeating the tumble over and 
over again, as if practicing for the falls which they might be obliged to take 
later in life." 

The musk ox, as already intimated, arranges itself better in 
this company than elsewhere, since it is now plain that it is not 
a connecting link between the oxen and sheep, , „ 

. & , r Musk Ox. 

but must stand quite by itself, with the takin as its 

nearest apparent relative. The musk oxen are arctic in the 

1 The eyes are black only in kids ; in adult goats they are straw-yellow. — E. I. 

265 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



strictest sense of the word, for Peary found them upon the north- 
ernmost shores of Grantland and Greenland, and none wander 
even in midwinter farther south than the Arctic Circle ; they are 
not found west of Cape Bathhurst, nor east of Fox Channel and 
Baffin Bay, nor on the west coast of Greenland, although 
frequenting the east coast south to about N. Lat. 7c . None 
now occurs anywhere in the Old World, but in Pleistocene 

times these animals 
inhabited Asia and 
Europe down to 
the east-and-west 
mountain axis, and 
were hunted by the 
men of the early 
Stone Age ; 83 and 
at a somewhat ear- 
lier time musk oxen, 
of extinct genera 
as well as species, 
roamed over this 
continent, as far 
south as Kansas. 
These singular ani- 
mals have little resemblance to other ruminants except 
in the bisonlike head. "I gaze upon each living musk ox 
in captivity with a feeling of wonder, as if it were a 
creature from another world," exclaims Hornaday, 95 who took 
a particular interest in them from the fact that in 1902 he 
had under his charge at the New York "Zoo" a female 
captured by Eskimo near Lady Franklin Bay, and brought 
around to San Francisco by a whaler; and also a calf 
brought from Fort Conger (Lat. 8i°), Greenland (see illus- 
tration) ; neither lived out the year, nor have specimens 
brought to Europe long survived. 

266 




Copyright, N. Y. Zool. Society. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



Greenland Musk Ox and Calf. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MUSK' OX 

"In it," says Hornaday again, "one sees an oblong mass of very long 
and wavy brown hair, four and a half feet high by six and a half feet long, 
supported on very short and postlike legs, that are half hidden by the 
sweeping pelage of the body. The three-inch tail is so very small and short 
it is quite invisible. There is a blunt and hairy muzzle, round and shin- 
ing eyes, but the ears are almost invisible. The whole top of the head is 
covered by a pair of horns enormously flattened at the base, and meeting 
each other in the center-line of the body. From the meeting point they 
sweep downward over the edge of the cranium, close to the cheeks, but 
finally recurve upward before coming to a point, like the waxed mustache 
of a boulevardier. . . . The outer hair is a foot or more in length, and often 
touches the snow when the animal walks." 

The name is due to a musky odor, useful in enabling the animals to find 
one another and keep together during the winter darkness and storms of 
their terrible home, which is perceptible to human nostrils at a considerable 
distance, but does not taint the flesh if a carcass is quickly and properly 
disemboweled; and the meat is excellent. 

Musk oxen go about in bands feeding upon anything vegeta- 
ble they can find. How they get enough in winter is a mys- 
tery. They probably paw down through the snow; and 
Schwatka concluded they used their horns as snow-shovels, 
as the reindeer do. Their one natural enemy is wolves, and 
against these they have learned that their only safety is in stand- 
ing firmly in a bunch with the young in the center, and the 
rams forming a fighting front all around. The same tactics 
are used when the Eskimo and their wolfish dogs attack a herd. 

Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka witnessed such an assault, 
and speaks of the musk oxen as presenting a most formidable 
appearance, with their rumps firmly wedged together, a com- 
plete circle of swaying horns presented to the front, with great 
bloodshot eyeballs glaring like red-hot shot amidst the escap- 
ing steam from their panting nostrils, and pawing and plunging 
at the circle of furious dogs that encompassed them. This 
habit of quickly coming to bay makes it easier for men to get 
near them ; and the natives often stab them to death with spear 
or knife. The conditions seem much harder on the Barren 

267 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Grounds, however, than near the arctic coast. The sport of 
hunting the musk ox, as depicted by Whitney, 219 Pike, Russell, 
and others, appears to lie more in the satisfaction of having 
overcome tremendous hardships than in the actual killing, 
which resembles butchery. Without dogs it would be practi- 
cally impossible to get near them, at any rate in the Barren 
Grounds. 

The antelopes remain to be treated in the broad family 
Bovidae, of which the cattle form one section, the sheep and 
Antelope goats a second, the musk ox a third, and the Anti- 
Tribe, lopinae a fourth. This group is the oldest and most 
generalized of the family, dating from the Miocene, the frag- 
ments recovered indicating at first small, gazellelike animals, 
and later large ones with stout, somewhat twisted horns. In 
those days they were widely diffused over southern Europe and 
Asia, but seem never to have reached America, for our "ante- 
lope" belongs to another family. It is still one of the problems 
of zoology to account for their disappearance from Europe. 
Their introduction into Africa appears to have been compara- 
tively recent, but once established there they diversified and 
multiplied in a manner unparalleled elsewhere, the total number 
of kinds of African antelopes now exceeding ninety. 

"It is exceedingly difficult," writes Beddard, 37 "to separate the ante- 
lopes from the sheep, oxen, and goats;" and paleontologists believe the 
latter are offshoots from an early antelopelike stock. 244 Mr. Beddard 
continues: "The term 'antelope' is rather of popular than of zoological 
significance. ... It is perhaps with the goats that the antelopes have the 
nearest affinities." The foremost authorities on the group, Messrs. Thomas 
and Sclater, whose "Book of Antelopes," 228 in four quarto volumes with 
magnificent colored plates, is a model of what a monograph of a group of 
animals ought to be, arrange the thirty-five recognized genera in the fol- 
lowing order : — 

First come the big bovine elands, the koodoos, nilgais, and 
" harnessed" bush bucks. The eland is the greatest of African 

268 





V 








WATERBUCK 



TYPES OF ANTELOPES 

DORCAS GAZELLE 
GEMS 
BLACKBUI K 



GERENOOK 
HARTEBEEST 



ELANDS AND KOODOOS 



antelopes, six feet in height, and weighing fifteen hundred 
pounds; and the straight, upstanding, closely twisted horns, 
present in both sexes, may measure twenty-eight Elands and 
inches long. The form is oxlike, enhanced by a Koodoos - 
small hump, great dewlap, and long tail; and the proper color 
is bright fawn, but often the thinness of the hair gives the old 
bulls a bluish cast. Formerly numerous all over eastern and 
southern Africa, the excellence of its 
flesh and hide and the ease with 
which this heavy and comparatively 
slow animal could be killed, together 
with the epidemic of rinderpest which 
swept over central Africa a few years 
ago, have practically exterminated 
this noble species, which soon will be 
visible only in captivity. It breeds 
well in confinement, and there seems 
no reason why it should not be led 
slowly to increase into a valuable do- 
mestic. The Derbian eland is a rare 
and handsome West African form. 

The related koodoos are a genus of large, handsome 
African antelopes with spirally twisted horns (on the male 
alone), whose skins are variegated by irregular white stripes 
down the sides, and by a V-mark below the forehead. Still 
more pleasingly marked are the bush bucks, of which several 
species are scattered over all Africa south of the Sahara, vary- 
ing in size from that of a goat to that of a pony, and having 
richly colored coats ornamented with irregular white stripes, 
while their horns are wavy rather than spiral. All this group 
avoid the open plains and extensive herding, and wander 
alone or in small parties in rough, bushy country, where they 
browse as well as graze. Schillings 269 has much to say of them, 
and especially of the protective value of their striped coats. 

269 




An Eland Buck. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



"The prettiest creature of the jungles is the harnessed antelope (A 
scripta). This is never found in herds, but generally in pairs, or three or 
Harnessed f° ur together. It is seldom met with in open plains, but is 
Bush Buck. an inhabitant of the bush, and will lie tolerably close, start- 
ing up with a frantic rush when suddenly disturbed. A fine buck will 
weigh about ninety pounds. The male is dark brown, ornamented with 
snow-white stripes, six or seven of which descend from the back upon either 




A Harnessed Bush Buck. 

flank and the hindquarters; a few white marks are upon the shoulders, 
and white spots upon the thighs ; a long white line from the shoulder ex- 
tends in a continuation below the transverse marks upon the flanks, and 
terminates near the junction of the hind leg. This resembles a white 
trace, hence the name 'harnessed antelope.'" 147 

Of the bush bucks, however, the most rare and noteworthy 
is the inyala or Angas's antelope, whose home is in the fever- 

270 



THE INYALA AT HOME 

haunted coast jungles of Portuguese East Africa. The ac- 
companying colored plate will give an idea of the peculiar form 
and coloring of the buck, whose fine lyrate horns and 

' Inyala. 

mantling fringes give him a very distinguished ap- 
pearance. The female is rich rufous red, with a black line 
along the spine, and many narrow white stripes down the sides 
and haunches; she is hornless. Although long known, it is 
only since 1896 that we have gained much knowledge of its 
habits or obtained specimens, the latter chiefly through the 
efforts of F. C. Selous. Everywhere this antelope spends its 
life in the densest, miasmatic thickets; and in much of its 
range the natives refuse to eat its flesh. The trials the inyala 
hunter must undergo may be judged by the difficulty Selous 
met with in securing his first one. 

"We now commenced to creep very cautiously through the thick thorny 
bush, making our way for the most part through tunnels made by hippo- 
potami during their night excursions in search of food. We had usually 
to walk bent nearly double — often having to creep on our hands and 
knees; and, as the day was now very hot and steamy, we were soon 
bathed in perspiration. 

" We had been creeping about the bush in the uncomfortable manner 
I have described for about an hour, when we suddenly came upon a little 
circular opening some fifty or sixty yards in diameter. As we approached 
the edge of this open space, advancing very cautiously in a stooping atti- 
tude down a hippopotamus path, my guide suddenly dropped to the ground. 
As he did so, I got a clear view past him, and saw standing amongst the 
grass and bush, ... a great black shaggy form, which, indistinctly as I 
could see it in the deep shadow of the bush, I knew was an inyala ram — 
the first that my eyes had ever looked upon in the flesh." 

That this hunting may be dangerous sport, as well as risky to one's 
health appears from a memorandum of another hunter: "Living, the bush 
buck is dangerous enough; when wounded, one I shot through the heart 
at eighty yards charged me like a flash of lightning, falling dead ten yards 
from my feet; and another, shot by an acquaintance of mine, also through 
the heart, drove his bayonetlike horns into the stomach of a native, killing 
him on the spot." 

By such perils and pains are the treasures of our museums collected ! 

271 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




Relatives of the inyala are the shy marsh-hunting sitatungas, whose 
feet are furnished with hoofs of relatively enormous length, which spread 
far apart at every step, enabling their owner 
to walk upon marshy ground without sinking 
deeply, or at all. With this modification goes 
great flexibility of the ankle joints, which 
yield to the weight of the body sufficiently to 
allow the false hoofs and the smooth, tough, 
horny skin at the back of the pasterns to rest 
upon the soil and thus further broaden the 
supporting surface; but these "slimpsy" ankles 
and elongated toes give the animal a very awk- 
ward and comparatively slow gait when it is 
compelled to walk on hard ground. 

hoof of sitatunga. To this section, although a native of 

India, belong the oddly cowlike nilgais, 
which, where not much disturbed, become so fearless as to 
mingle with the village cattle herd. They prefer a dry, 
hilly, thinly wooded country, and where it is open 
may sometimes be run down on horseback and 
speared; otherwise they are not much hunted, for the short 
little horns are a poor trophy. The general color is dark gray 
with a black mane and some faint white markings about the 
head. In some parts of India these animals commit great 
havoc by nightly depredations on the crops, but the Hindoos 
will seldom destroy them on account of their resemblance to 
the sacred cow — an unexpected phase of " protective mimicry" ! 
A common name in India is "blue cow." 

Another section of the group embraces very large antelopes 
of Africa, having long, stout, ringed horns in both sexes, such 
as the sable and roan, the gemsbok and allied species. 
Among these are some of the most conspicuous 
and familiar antelopes of the arid plains south and east of the 
Mediterranean. Thus the addax, beatrix, beisa, and other 
large, pale, dark-legged species of the Sahara, Arabia, and 

272 



Nilgai. 



Oryx. 



SABLE AND ROAN ANTELOPES 



Syria, known broadly as "oryx," are represented on the Egyp- 
tian monuments; and their long, straight, powerful horns, 
sweeping back almost to 
the haunches, may, when 
seen in profile, look as if 
only one were there, and so 
have anciently suggested the 
fabled unicorn. All are 
handsomely marked in 
sharply contrasted patterns 
of dark and light colors, 
and some of the most strik- 
ing, as the gemsbok, in- 
habit South Africa, or did 
formerly. The most admi- 
rable of all antelopes, per- 
haps, is one of these, the 
sable, the discovery of which 
by Captain Cornwallis 
Harris in 1838 was the be- 
ginning of an admiring en- 
thusiasm among sportsmen, 
increasing as its subject 
becomes rarer and more 
remote. " It were vain," 
declares Harris, 230 " to at- 
tempt a description of the sensation I experienced when thus 
after three days of toilsome tacking and feverish anxiety, . . . 
I at length found myself in actual possession of so brilliant an 
addition to the riches of natural history. . . . We thought we 
could never have looked at or admired it sufficiently." A few 
years later Gordon Cumming repeated these joys. 

"Cantering along through the forest," he records, 142 "I came suddenly 
in full view of one oj the loveliest animals which graces this fair creation. 
T 273 




Copyright. N". Y. Zool. Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

The Roan Antelope. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

This was an old buck of the sable antelope, the rarest and most beautiful 
animal in Africa. It is large and powerful, partaking considerably of the 
nature of the ibex. Its back and sides are of glossy black, beautifully 
contrasting with the belly, which is white as driven snow. The horns are 
upward of three feet in length, and bend strongly back with a bold sweep, 
reaching nearly to the haunches. . . . The one which was now before me 
was the first I had seen, and I shall never forget the sensations I experienced 
on beholding a sight so thrilling to the sportsman's eye." 

In that admirable work of the artist John Millais, "A Breath 
Sable from the Veldt," 232 which is replete with charming 

Antelope. sketches of South African scenes and animals, many 
pages are given to this beautiful creature. 

" There is about the whole animal," this artist assures us, "that inde- 
scribable charm which is so intensely African and associated with the wild 
life. . . . Apart from its satinlike hide, sweeping horns, erect mane, and 
great strength, the sable antelope presents an appearance of fearlessness 
and nobility that is very striking, to say the least of it. Though the koodoo 
surpasses his rival in elegance and general appearance when dead, he is 
but a skulker, and makes but a poor show beside the sable on the veldt. . . . 
Like the koodoo the horns of the sable are its chief glory, and the noble 
manner in which the head is carried by the buck when on the move is a 
splendid thing to see. I could hardly imagine a finer subject for an animal 
painter." 

All these antelopes have an equine form and gait, but this 
one as he stands on the open plain where they love to pasture, 
a few together (mostly chestnut cows), with neck arched, mane 
flying, and chin drawn down, personifies a mettlesome, coal- 
black steed. Schulz 152 says the animal must take this atti- 
tude, in consequence of the length, curve, and sharpness of 
the horns, whose points would otherwise severely lacerate the 
back when the buck was in rapid motion; the horns are used 
with nervous quickness and force as weapons, wielded with 
undaunted courage even when attacked by lions. "More 
than once have natives related to us," Schulz notes, "that they 
have found the remains of a lion and sable lying side by side 
with the lion transfixed by the sharp horns of its prey." It is 

274 



BEAUTY OF GAZELLES 

a satisfaction to be able to record that many scattered herds 
of this stately species still exist in eastern Africa between the 
Transvaal and German East Africa ; and as it is readily tamed, 
and seems able to breed in captivity, the world is not likely 
soon to lose its handsome presence. 

In the company of the sable and roan antelopes come the 
koodoos, which like most of the larger antelopes are wonder- 
ful jumpers. F. J. Jackson, in his "Big Game Shooting in 
Africa," tells how he measured a jump by one of these ante- 
lopes to satisfy himself of its length. 

"She had been chased by a hyena," he says, "along a narrow footpath 
in a dense bush. In the middle of the path was a thick green bush about 
five feet high, round which the path took a turn and then went straight on 
again. The kudu had taken a flying leap over this bush, and the distance 
between the spoor of her hindfeet, where she took off, and the edge of the 
bush, was fifteen feet. The diameter of the bush was six feet, and the dis- 
tance from the edge of the bush on the other side to where she landed — 
i.e. to the spoor-marks of her hindfeet — another ten feet, in all thirty- 
one feet. The hyena had given up the chase some thirty yards farther on." 

Following these large antelopes come the small, delicate, 
active gazelles, which have furnished to Oriental poetry a 
type of gentle grace, and especially of beauty in 
the eye; it is therefore disconcerting to be informed 
by a matter-of-fact naturalist that "the beauty of its eyes is 
not to be compared with that of some other ruminating ani- 
mals, the whole face being far too sheeplike!" He referred 
to the common dorcas gazelle of Egypt and Syria, a fair type 
of the whole group, which is believed to contain twenty or 
twenty-five species, scattered from Morocco to India. It 
stands about twenty-four inches high and weighs sixty pounds. 

"Born in the scorching sun, nursed in the burning sand of the treeless 
and shadowless wilderness, the gazelle is among the antelope tribe as the 
Arab horse is among its brethren, — the high-bred and superlative beauty 
of the race. The skin is as sleek as satin, of a color difficult to describe, 
as it varies between the lightest mauve and yellowish brown; the belly is 

275 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

snow-white; the legs from the knee downwards also white, and as fine as 
though carved from ivory; the hoof, beautifully shaped, tapers to a sharp 
point. The head of the buck is ornamented by gracefully curved, annu- 
lated horns, perfectly black, and generally from nine to twelve inches long 
on the bend; the eye is the well-known perfection — the full, large, soft, 
and jet-black eye of the gazelle." 



These gazelles are numerous in twos and threes all over Egypt, 
Arabia, and Syria, and in the summer become comparatively 
tame in the oases. Young ones are frequently caught (and 
make delightful pets) as they come to the springs to drink in 

very hot weather ; 
then also they feed 
on juicy plants and 
scrub, and visit the 
crops at night. At 
other times they 
will lie absolutely 
quiet while a man 
or a caravan passes 
not far away; and 
doubtless hundreds 
so resting are not 
seen at all, or are mistaken for a heap of stones. Like all 
gazelles, too, they will stand motionless for some time when 
they first see a person approaching, so that a man moving 
very quietly may often walk within easy rifle range before they 
take to that swift, ground-skimming gait graphically spoken of 
as "flight." A more sportsmanlike way of getting them than 
by shooting is to course them with greyhounds, or falcons, or 
both. Ordinary dogs they regard with contempt, and are 
caught by jackals only by the cleverness of these hounds of the 
desert in working in relays which head off and turn the game 
until it is exhausted. Even a pack of the best greyhounds 
often fail. 

276 




Dorcas Gazelles. 



THE INDIAN BLACK BUCK 

Egyptian Arabs frequently catch them in a form of trap which is widely 
employed against all the small antelopes and some other game, and which is 
made wholly, except the short rope, from the date palm. It consists of 
a ring, of plaited leaf fibers, about three inches in diameter, through which 
are pushed date thorns, which converge toward the centers where they 
slightly overlap. A hole is then dug in a likely place, and the ring set over 
it, capped by the noose at one end of the rope, which at the other end is 
tied to a heavy buried stick. The whole is then sprinkled with sand and 
left. Should a gazelle put its foot through the ring, it will be held by the 
in-pointing thorns, its struggles will tighten the noose around its leg, and 
the attached stick will so impede flight that next morning it can easily be 
tracked and overtaken. This trap in some shape is used for the .capture 
of all sorts of animals throughout all northern Africa. 55 

Nearly allied to this gazelle are several others in Africa and 
Asia whose habits are similar, yet in regard to each of which 
many peculiar and entertaining facts are on record. 
A familiar Indian one is the blackbuck or "ravine 
deer," in which the bucks are blackish brown down to the 
middle of the sides and chest, and down the outside of the 
legs, sharply contrasted with pure white below and inside 
the slender limbs. Its dandified manner of walking and hold- 
ing its head haughtily high, the long horns lying gracefully 
along the satiny back, give it a most fetching air of self-satis- 
fied pride. Does and young bucks are fawn-colored and 
white. 

This beautiful and agile gazelle is one of the game animals of all the 
open plains of India, and requires quick shooting to bring it to bag. Cum- 
ming records a queer incident in this connection. "One of our party," 
he says, "fired at a buck antelope and struck it on the side of the horn 
about three inches above the head. The effect of the shot was to wrench 
off the horn from the spiral bone which it covered. In fact, it was simply 
unscrewed, and by the force of the shot was sent spinning several feet into 
the air.'' This blackbuck is the special object of sport with the cheeta. 

The desolate plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia sustain flocks 
of several species of antelope, one of which, the chiru (Ti- 
betan; Mongolian, or on go), is notable not only for its long, 

277 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

dense coat of crisp, pinkish fawn hair, but for its enlarged 
puffy nose, due, perhaps, to the need of breathing more co- 
piously the thin air of its lofty home than is required 
at lower levels. Remarkable, also, are the mark- 
ings which distinguish the male, — a sooty black muzzle 
and a narrow black stripe down the front of each leg; and 
still more the straight, sharply ringed, strikingly erect horns, 
which are perhaps unsurpassed among antelopes as effective 
weapons. They measure twenty-three to twenty-six inches 
in length or height, and are in demand among the people of 
Tibet not only for their practical excellence as handles, etc., 
but for miraculous virtues, — in fact, the whole animal is 
" sacred" in the opinion of the llamas and is not eaten. Few 
book writers have seen the chiru, one of the fullest accounts 
being that by Kinloch. 160 

"In the mornings and evenings," he tells us, "it frequents the grassy 
margins of glacial streams, which frequently flow between steep banks 
gradually scarped out by the floods of centuries and now remote from the 
ordinary water's edge. The ravines have for the most part been cut 
through gently sloping valleys ; and on ascending their steep sides, slightly 
undulating plains will be found to stretch away until they merge in the easy 
slopes of the rounded hills which bound the valley. To these plains the 
antelope betake themselves during the day, and there they excavate hollows 
deep enough to conceal their bodies, from which, themselves unperceived, 
they can detect any threatening danger at a great distance." 

Far more ugly in countenance, by reason of the swollen 
shape of the nose, is the somewhat larger saiga (Russian, sai- 
gak; Kirghiz, kiik), formerly numerous throughout 
southern Russia and still roaming in small herds 
over the steppes east and west of the Caspian Sea, and migrat- 
ing with the seasons. Their habits are much the same as 
those of our pronghorn. In Pleistocene times this and another 
species of saiga abounded in all parts of Europe, and was hunted 
by the primitive sportsman, who found its flesh, as do modern 
hunters, unusually good. 

278 



MIGRATIOXS OF SrRLVGBOKS 



Springbok. 



The lovely South African springbok is almost a gazelle, and 
has been the delight of every visitor to the veldt since the days 
of Captain Harris, — one of the earliest and best of 
naturalists to tramp over South Africa, and to pic- 
ture for us with both pen and brush the teeming life of its 
plains a century ago. The colored drawings in his doubly 
valuable book 230 give a vivid idea of the 
throngs and the diversity of antelopes 
then to be seen, at favorable times, graz- 
ing on the pastures of the Orange River 
Valley, where now so few creatures are 
visible save branded flocks and herds. 





Lodf.r's Gazelle of the Sahara Desert. 

Nevertheless some still remain, and among them none is more 
certain than the periodical visitations of springboks. 

"In the old days," Bryden 231 tells us, "trek bokken (springbok migra- 
tions) were a source of the greatest alarm and danger to the colonist, quite 
as much, in fact, as the locust flights. Countless thousands of these ante- 
lopes, impelled by drought and the loss of their more secluded pastures, 
migrated from their true nursery and headquarters, in the country formerly 

279 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

known as. Great Bushmanland, into more fertile districts in the interior of 
the colony. The immense numbers of the antelopes literally swept every- 
thing before them, and farmers frequently lost whole flocks in consequence. 
Our host described the approach of the trek bokken I speak of; enveloped 
in clouds of dust the herds came on. At one time the sight was positively 
alarming, for the springbok on these occasions cannot retreat from sheer 
press of numbers, and one has to be careful to keep out of their way. As 
the leading antelopes feed and become satiated, they fall back and allow 
those in the rear to come to the front; but for this provision of instinctive 
nature the rear guard would be starved to death, for those in front, of course, 
leave not a particle of nutriment as they pass. During these migrations 
the farmers shoot as much venison as they desire, and prepare immense 
quantities of biltong (salted and sun-dried flesh), of which the springbok 
furnishes the best quality." 

Gordon Cumming 142 graphically describes a similar sight; and Mil- 
lais 232 shows in delightful sketches their graceful manner of leaping and 
running. Turning to Bry den's book again : — 

"When we had got within three quarters of a mile, the antelopes be- 
came disturbed and began those extraordinary saltatory accomplishments 
('pronken,' the Boers term them) from which they take their name. One 
of the herd, followed by several others, would spring sheer and straight 
from its four feet, with arched back, ten or twelve feet into the air, as if 
made of india rubber ; this leap would be repeated half a dozen times or 
more, and then the animals would settle to a canter, and thence into a 
gallop. While these marvelous bounds are being executed, the springboks 
erect the curious mass of long snow-white hair, which extends from about 
the middle of the back as far as the tail, imparting a most singular effect. 
When the animal is not excited or alarmed, this hackle or ruff lies closely 
to the back, and is almost enveloped in the loose fawn-colored skin which, 
closes over it." 

Next to present themselves is a group of large deerlike, 
reddish, water-loving African antelopes, called waterbucks, 
Water _ and also reedbucks, because found mainly in marshes, 

bucks. where their splay feet keep them from sinking in 

the mire. The big shaggy waterbuck proper is familiar in 
menageries ; and in its native land is as likely to be found on 
rocky hills as wading among aquatic weeds, but most of its rel- 
atives are smaller and more strictly swamp dwellers. Oddly 

280 



DIMINUTIVE BUSH ANTELOPES 

enough the nearest allies of these marsh lovers are quite 
their opposites in habits, — the rheboks, steinboks, and klip- 
springers, small, short-horned, shy creatures, with steinboks 
the agility of a diminutive chamois. They will ^ p ^i ng " 
scale with ease a cliff that looks impossible to any- Duikers, 
thing but a bird, and will leap from point to point among rocks 
hardly large enough for a mouse to perch upon. "It seems 
extraordinary, " Drummond exclaims, "how their delicate 
limbs escape injury when they take bound after bound like 
an india-rubber ball in places that a cat would shudder at." 
The steinboks, of which several species are scattered through- 
out Africa south of the Sahara, are less acrobatic and feed in 
flocks on the veldt, mingled with springboks. Among them 
are the smallest of all ruminants, the bright chestnut-and- 
white "royal" antelope of the Guinea coast, which is only 
twelve inches tall; but the exquisite beni Israel, seen bound- 
ing along the arid, volcanic rocks and sands of the eastern 
coast of the Red Sea, and beloved of the Arabs and Abyssin- 
ians, is not much larger. 

Some of the species of the next group, the duikerboks (i.e. 
diving goats as the Boers named them, because they plunge 
headlong into the chaparral when alarmed), are also tiny, — the 
mouse-colored bluebucks, swarming in the Natal jungles, stand- 
ing only thirteen inches high ; but most of the duikers are larger. 

"They abound in forested and bushy districts, moving about in small 
parties, leaping among the rocks, and dodging into and through the thickets 
with surprising agility, while their plain colors render them practically 
invisible when quiet. All have very convex foreheads, and very large eyes 
and ears between which, in both sexes, rise two little spike horns and a 
median tuft of stiff hairs. All these antelopes feed largely on berries and 
small fruits, and their flesh has an excellent flavor. The typical species, 
known in the North as 'deloo,' is very common in southwest Africa, and is 
often tamed as a pet." 

To this group belong also the larger wood antelopes and 
zebra antelope of West Africa, which dwell in steaming 

281 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

forests, and hence are richly colored. The zebra antelope, 
in fact, is unique among ruminants in having " eight or 
Zebra nme black transverse bands crossing the back and 

Antelope. l i nSj and gradually narrowing to a point on 
the flanks, the ground color being golden brown." Lastly, 
there must be mentioned another singular form, the four- 
horned antelope or chousinga of India, of which the bucks 
usually have two pairs of horns. This curiosity is small, sand- 
colored, lurks in bushes and tall grass, and behaves more like 
a hare than an antelope. The books of sportsmen abound 
in stories of these pygmies among game, but it is distressing 
to read of shooting such charming little creatures. 

The last of the antelope section contains the hartbeests 
and gnus, — a class of large, powerful, African antelopes 
Hart- w i tn somewhat cattlelike characteristics. The 

beests. hartbeests vary from three feet two inches to four 

feet in height at the fore shoulder, from which the back slopes 
decidedly toward the haunches; this, with their thin necks, 
long narrow heads, and queerly bent, spreading, and rugged 
horns, give them an ungraceful figure. The color is always 
some tint of red; and Willoughby, who found them in thou- 
sands in Somaliland, says it is highly protective, for he was 
often mistaken in thinking one lying on the ground to be only 
an ant-hill. Another observer, Mr. Gedge, noted the same 
thing in British East Africa about 1892. 

"Coke's hartbeest is usually seen in company with other game, and 
the sight of these vast mixed herds, which include zebras, and Grant's and 
Thomson's gazelles, is one not easily forgotten. Like all hartbeests, it 
is very wary and difficult to approach, its senses of sight and smell being 
extremely keen. During the time that the herd is grazing there are usually 
one or two sentinels posted on the nearest elevations to give warning of the 
approach of danger. The white -ant hills with which the entire country 
abounds are usually selected for this purpose, and are patronized to such 
an extent that I have seen as many as eight or ten occupying the summit of 
one of these hills, which looked as if it could support only a third of that 

282 



HARTBEESTS AND GNUS 

number. The reddish color and general contour of these mounds bear in 
many cases so close a resemblance to the antelopes themselves, particularly 
when grazing, that I have frequently been deceived." ~ s 

Everyone speaks of the deceptive gait of these animals, which appear to 
go at a moderate rate until one tries to overtake them, especially on rough 
ground. Captain Swayne, whose "Field Notes" (Proceedings Zoological 
Society, London, 1892) contain so much that is novel and important in 
regard to the fauna of Somaliland, remarks: — 

"There is not always much game to be got at in the Haud; but a year 
ago, coming on to ground which had not yet been visited by Europeans, I 
found one of these plains covered with herds of (Swayne's) hartbeests, 
there being perhaps a dozen herds in sight, each containing three or four 
hundred individuals. Hundreds of bulls were scattered singly on the out- 
skirts, and in spaces between the herds, grazing, fighting, or lying down. 
... In the midday haze on the plains they look like a troop of lions. 
The pace of the hartbeest is an ungraceful, lumbering canter, but this 
species is really the swiftest and most enduring of the Somaliland antelopes. 
. . . From their living so much in open grass plains, the hartbeests must 
subsist entirely on grass, for there is nothing else to eat; and they must be 
able to exist for several days without water. Hartbeests are the favorite 
food of lions." 

Among the better known are the tetel of the North (also Syria and 
Arabia) ; Coke's, Swayne's, Jackson's, and Hunter's of the East Coast 
region; the korigun of the Sudan and Senegal; the black -marked 
caama of South Africa, the one to which the name was first applied; 
the sassaby, konzi, and violet-hued, strikingly face-blazed blesbok and 
bontebok ; but several of these no longer exist save in the remotest wilds. 

Associated with them are the grotesque South African gnus 
or wildebeests, which seem a composite or caricature of the 
whole hoofed-and-horned tribe. " The body and 

J Gnus. 

legs are antelopelike, but the head is so massive 
and broad as to resemble that of ah ox. The muzzle is naked, 
the eyes small, with a gland beneath each, whence sprout long, 
stiff hairs, and the horns, which in old age form a helmet over 
the forehead, are broad, black, and shaped like an African 
buffalo's, to which must be added the bovinelike circumstance 
not present elsewhere among antelopes, that the horn cores 
are honeycombed with cavities." There were two species, 

283 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the white-tailed of the Cape region, which .was deep brown, 
with a long, white, horselike tail and mane, and a fringe of 
long hair on the chest and chin; and, second, the blue or 
brindled gnu, of duller hue, and with tail and mane black 
and no hair hanging between the fore legs. The latter lived 
north of the Zambezi, and not being able, because of its depend- 
ence upon water, 
to flee to the des- 
erts in which sev- 
eral of its more 
enduring allies have 
been able to find 
refuge, has been 
nearly extermi- 
nated, as have also 
the blesboks, bonte- 
boks, and other 
relatives once nu- 
merous. 

The information 
in the writings of 
African sportsmen 
and naturalists as to the haunts and habits of antelopes is almost 
endless, and it is only as a sample of the excellent reading these 
books offer that the following is quoted from Gordon Cum- 
ming, who shot and wrote when the fair plains of the Karoo 
were more alive with game than even now are they with herds 
and flocks. 




White-tailed Gnu. 



"Blesboks differ from springboks in the determined and invariable 
manner in which they scour the plains, right in the wind's eye, and also in 
Blesbok the manner in which they carry their noses along the ground. 

Herds. Throughout the greater part of the year they are very wary 

and difficult of approach, but more especially when the does have young 
ones At that season, when one herd is disturbed, and takes away up the 

284 



BLESBOKS AND WILDEBEESTS 

wind, every other herd in view follows them; and the alarm extending for 
miles and miles down the wind, to endless herds beyond the vision of the 
hunter, a continued stream of blesboks may often be seen scouring up 
wind for upward of an hour, and covering the landscape as far as the eye 
can see. The springboks, which in equal numbers frequent the same 
ground, do not, in general, adopt the same decided course as the blesboks, 
but take away in every direction across the plains, sometimes with flying 
bounds, beautifully exhibiting the long, snowy-white hair with which their 
backs are adorned, and at others walking slowly and carelessly out of the 
hunter's way, scarcely deigning to look at him, with an air of perfect inde- 
pendence, as if aware of their own matchless speed. 

"The blesbok is one of the finest antelopes in the world, and is allowed 
to be the swiftest buck in Africa. He, nevertheless, attains very high con- 
dition, and at this period was exceedingly fat. I was surprised and de- 
lighted with the exquisite manner in which his beautiful colors are blended 
together. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this animal. Like most other 
African antelopes, his skin emitted a most delicious and powerful perfume 
of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs. A secretion issues from between his 
hoofs which has likewise a pleasing perfume. 

"The black wildebeests, which also thickly cover the entire length and 
breadth of the blesbok country, in herds averaging from twenty to fifty, 
have no regular course, like the blesboks. Unless driven by a large field 
of hunters, they do not leave their ground, although disturbed. Wheeling 
about in endless circles, and performing the most extraordinary variety of 
intricate evolutions, the shaggy herds of these eccentric and fierce-looking 
animals are forever capering and gamboling round the hunter on every 
side. While he is riding hard to obtain a family shot of a herd in front of 
him, other herds are charging down wind on his right and left, and, having 
described a number of circular movements, they take up positions upon 
the very ground across which the hunter rode only a few minutes before. 

"Singly, and in small troops of four or five individuals, the old bull 
wildebeests may be seen stationed at intervals throughout the plains, stand- 
ing motionless during a whole forenoon, coolly watching with a philosophic 
eye the movements of the other game, eternally uttering a loud snorting 
noise, and also a short, sharp cry which is peculiar to them. When the 
hunter approaches these old bulls, they commence whisking their long white 
tails in a most eccentric manner; then springing suddenly into the air, 
they begin prancing and capering, and pursue each other in circles at their 
utmost speed. Suddenly they all pull up together to overhaul the intruder, 
when two of the bulls will often commence fighting in the most violent 

285 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

manner, dropping on their knees at every shock ; then quickly wheeling 
about they kick up their heels, whirl their tails with a fantastic flourish, and 
scour across the plain enveloped in a cloud of dust." 142 

The "antelope" of the North American plains stands in a 

family (Antilocapridae) by itself, on account of the singular 

structure of its horns, which make the name prong- 

Pronghorn. . r & 

horn far more appropriate. Its nearest relative 
among us is the white goat; but it has no false hoofs, and is 
unlike any other sheathed-horned creature in that its horns are 
branched, in the way their covering is acquired, and most of all 

in the fact that they are periodi- 
cally shed and renewed. All to- 
gether it is the most singular of 
ruminants. 

The skull is surmounted by two spike- 
like horn cores, rising over, not behind, 
the great eye orbit and leaning outward. 
These are covered with a skin and coat of 
bristly hairs which agglutinate at the tip 
and change into a sheath of horn, the 

change proceeding toward the base until 
Growing horns, showing the . . . , , . . , 

hardening at the tips. the bony cores are sheathed with horns 

which stand about a foot in height, are 
curved inward, so as often to be truly lyrate, and have one prong (occasion- 
ally more) on the front edge. Every winter these horns are pushed off by 
a new hairy growth beneath them, comparable to the " velvet" of deer's 
antlers, which in turn hardens into another pair of true horns. It was not 
until about 1865 that the fact of the shedding of the horns, which had been 
long before asserted by Indians and plainsmen, was admitted by "the 
faculty"; Audubon declared he had "proved to the contrary." To Dr. 
Caton 216 belongs the credit of tracing the full process. The affinity of 
the pronghorn to the deer, suggested by this fact, becomes more apparent 

„ , when it is recalled that in the Miocene era there lived in our 

Merycodus. 

West a group of small, graceful plains runners called now 
deer-antelopes, because, with the general structure of antelopes, they 
bore on their heads branching antlers of the American type, i.e. round, 
equally forking, and without a brow tine ; but these antlers rose from right 

286 





Curiously Deformed Horns. 



DANGER OF EXTERMINATION 

above the eyes, not from a point well behind them, as in deer. A complete 
skeleton of one of them (Merycodus), mounted in the Museum in New 
York, is about as big as a gazelle and has four-branched antlers. From 
one of these deer-antelopes descended, it is believed, our pronghorn, the 
antler having degenerated into a deciduous horn, and the pedicel become 
elevated into a permanent bony core. 

This singular and beautiful animal half a century ago ranged 
in enormous plenty over all the plains and valleys of the far 
West, avoiding mountain slopes and arid deserts, from the 
North Saskatchewan to cen- 
tral Mexico; but now only 
scattered remnants survive, 
and the species is likely soon 
to become extinct outside of 
governmental reservations, because it will rarely bear young in 
captivity. I feel that it is a duty to repeat the warning uttered 
by the experienced Mr. Hornaday : — 

"Let him who may hereafter be tempted, either lawfully or unlawfully, 
to raise a death-dealing rifle against one of these beautiful prairie rovers, 
remember two things before he pulls the trigger: In this land of plenty, 
no man really needs this creature's paltry pounds of flesh ; and if his two- 
cent bullet flies true to the mark, it will destroy an animal more wonderful 
than the rarest orchid that ever bloomed. . . . Surely this animal is worth 
perpetual protection at our hands, rather than needless, cruel, and inex- 
cusable slaughter. It cannot be perpetuated by breeding in captivity; 
and unless preserved in a wild state, it will become extinct" 

The pronghorn buck stands about thirty-eight inches high at 
the shoulder, and is a varying yellowish brown above, darker 
on the face, but dull white on chin and cheeks, in two crescentic 
patches across the throat, on the under surfaces, and in a broad 
heart-shaped patch around the brown scut of a tail. 

This whiteness of the stern belongs in a greater or less degree to nearly 
all the ruminants, and to some other kinds of animals that associate in 
flocks; and is regarded by naturalists as a "recognition mark" by 
which members of a herd are able to see and follow their leader and each 
other. At such times, or when one of the troop suspects danger, the white 

287 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



area is increased, or is made more showy by a "cocking" of the tail dis- 
playing its white under side, as do rabbits, hares, goats, and conspicuously 
Signifi- our Virginia deer; or by the erection and expansion of the 

White ° f ^airs on the patch, which are longer than elsewhere in such 
Stern. animals. This last arrangement is characteristic of the roe, 

the sika deer, and of our prongbuck. Ernest Thompson Seton has described 
it picturesquely as a "great double disk or chrysanthemum of white that 
shines afar like a patch of snow" ; but he gives it an exaggerated importance. 




Pronghorn Bucks and Does. 

In summer the hair of the pronghorn is smooth and flexible, but as 
winter approaches it lengthens; each hair becomes thick, its interior be- 
comes white and spongy, it loses its flexibility, and at last becomes brittle, 
so that its point is easily rubbed off. This deerlike coat forms a close and 
warm covering for the animal, but renders the skin useless as fur, nor does 
it make serviceable leather. The flesh, however, is delicious. 

The life of our antelope is very simple. It is the genius of 
the dry, gravelly, bunch-grass plains, where it finds in the sun- 

288 



PRONGHORN DOES AND FAWNS 

cured nutritious herbage relieved each spring by a juicy new 
growth all the sustenance it craves. Wooded spaces it natu- 
rally avoids, not only because it has no appetite for 
leaves and twigs, but because thickets shelter wolves 
and wildcats; yet now and then a solitary buck will make a 
grove his hermitage, or a heavy doe retire to some bushy glade 
to be delivered of her fawn. Of late, however, under the 
changed conditions in its home, the pronghorn seeks cover 
more than formerly. It has no goatlike fondness for rocks, 
and rarely climbs the rough slopes of even the foothills. 
• The young, usually two, are dropped in May or early June, 
when the mothers have stolen away separately to secret places, 
and the bucks are wandering alone or in small gay parties by 
themselves; and these fawns are not spotted, but plain dun 
miniatures of the mother, and for the first few days lie motion- 
less whatever happens, trusting to be overlooked; but soon 
they get upon their legs and begin to accompany the doe. From 
the start they show an instinctive intelligence in meeting the 
dangers that beset them, clinging, as if bound by a short tether, 
to the heels of the mother when, as so often happens, a coyote 
does its best to get past the valiant doe's defense of lowered 
horns (which are short, sharp, and unforked) and striking feet, 
to seize the tender youngling. I have told at length' else- 
where 36 of such a battle which I once witnessed on the Wyoming 
plains. Rattlesnakes are another ever present peril, but these 
the antelope, if not first fatally struck, cuts to pieces by stamp- 
ing upon them with quickly repeated bounds, all four hoofs 
alighting together on the reptile's coils. A pronghorn's javelin- 
like fore feet are its best weapon, though the bucks — furious 
in their rivalry when forming their harems — push one another 
about with their forked horns. Nowhere is to be read a more 
discerning, intimate, and delightful account of the prongbuck 
than in President Roosevelt's chapter on it in "The Deer 
Family" 233 ; and on this point he notes. — 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"All the deer are fond of skulking; the whitetail preeminently so. The 
prongbuck, on the contrary, never endeavors to elude observation. Its 
sole aim is to be able to see its enemies, and it cares nothing whatever about 
its enemies seeing it. Its coloring is very conspicuous, and is rendered 
still more so by its habit of erecting the white hair on its rump. It has a 
very erect carriage, and when it thinks itself in danger it always endeavors 
to get on some crest or low hill from which it can look all about. The great 
bulging eyes, situated at the base of the horns, scan the horizon far and 
near like twin telescopes. They pick out an object at such a distance that 
it would entirely escape the notice of a deer. When suspicious, they have a 
habit of barking, uttering a sound something like ' kau,' and repeating it 
again and again, as they walk up and down, endeavoring to find out if 
danger lurks in the unusual object. They are extremely curious, and in 
the old days it was often possible to lure them toward the hunter by waving 
a red handkerchief to and fro on a stick, or even by lying on one's back and 
kicking the legs." 

Yet in summer, when small scattered parties dot the plains 
— or used to — a band would lie down during the midday hours 

in some open valley and rest in negligent ease. More 
and Intel- than once have I ridden quietly over a ridge and 

thrown such a resting band into a momentary pa- 
ralysis. Surprised, yet hardly knowing what to fear, they would 
spring to their feet then, suddenly panic-stricken, start off in 
high, stiff "buck jumps," making no progress, and the picture 
of wild terror. An instant later, however, gathering its facul- 
ties, the band would skim away in flight, then, if not followed, 
halt a few hundred yards off to look back. This curiosity is a 
strong trait, and often brings antelopes close to camp, or into 
a band of horses or mules; and their liability to panic leads 
them now and then to run right into danger. Audubon pic- 
tures their contradictory behavior excellently in that long ac- 
count of the animal as he saw it on the upper Missouri in 1843, 
which so enriches his great work on American quadrupeds. 

This disposition is a mark of the high intelligence of the 
animal, whose wits have been sharpened by generations of life 
in the midst of danger. Judge Caton 216 came to have a very 

290 



INTELLIGENCE OF THE PRONG HORN' 

high idea of their brain power after keeping them in his park. 
"When taken young," he says, "it soon acquires the attach- 
ment of a child for the human species, and when captured 
adult in a short time becomes so tame that it will take food 
from the hand and follow one by the hour, walking through the 
grounds. . . . One that was in the constant habit of following 
me soon became disgusted with the elk which chased him, so 
that whenever he saw me going toward the gate which opened 
into the elk park, he would place himself in front of me and 
try to push me back." Hornaday warns us, however, from his 
experience in zoological gardens, that as the bucks grow older 
they become dangerously rough in their play. 

The speed of the pronghorn is scarcely surpassed by that of 
any antelope, but it is unable to sustain a swift pace for many 
miles, so that a pack of coyotes working together 
will tire it out, and a good hound, from which at 
first it will glide away with ease, will finally overtake it; nor 
does it seem able to leap over an obstacle more than a yard or 
so high, which accounts for the great influence the cattlemen's 
wire fences have had on its disappearance. This animal, in- 
deed, seems to have a superstitious fear of iron, and the early 
railroads across the plains permanently divided the herds north 
and south of them. Like all plains runners the pronghorns 
gathered toward winter into herds, and those of the North 
migrated southward to where the snow lay thinner over the 
pasturage, and streams remained unfrozen; but thousands 
starved during severe winters. Nowhere were they originally 
more abundant than upon the high, dry plains of the Arkansas 
Valley, western Texas, and thence out to California. 

The history of sport in the West abounds in stories of how 
the pronghorn is shot and coursed with hounds. The present 
writer will never forget some rides of that nature near Cheyenne, 
when his mettlesome gray seemed more bird than pony, as it 
raced over sage bush and gopher hole, up hill and down, after 

291 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



the fleeing quarry. It was great fun for us, and usually did no 
harm to the antelope. No better pictures of antelope hunting 
in every form can be found than those by Mr. Roosevelt in the 
books already commended to the reader. 



Another familiar animal, standing with the pronghorn in a 

betwixt and between" position as to antelopes and deer, is the 

giraffe. In most of its characteristics it is deerlike, 

but neither sex has antlers, while both bear on their 

forehead skull projections covered with hairy skin as in the 

pronghorn; but this skin never hardens into horn. It appears 



Giraffes. 




Copyright, X. Y. Zoological Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

North African Giraffes in the New York Zoological Park, 1906. 

probable, however, that in the Sivatherium, a gigantic prede- 
cessor of the giraffe, fossil in the Pliocene formations of India, 
the horns were sheathed, and, moreover, were forked as in the 

292 



GIRAFFE CHAR A CTERIS TICS 

prongbuck. The ancestral giraffes had shorter necks and legs 
more nearly of equal length than have their descendants. 

The modern giraffe (family Giraffidae) is the tallest of all 
animals, not only in carrying its head in some cases eighteen or 
nineteen feet above the ground, but in the height of its fore legs ; 
and the short, deep-chested body slopes on the back rapidly 
down to drooping hindquarters and a cowlike tail. The ex- 
traordinary neck, which has been obtained by the lengthening 
out of the vertebrae, not by increasing their number (7), serves 
the animal well by lifting its head high above the thickets and 
grass of the bushy country in which it most often dwells — a 
living conning tower. As it looks and listens for the ever 
possible enemy, it browses the crown of one or another of the 
mimosas whose tablelike tops seem arranged for the purpose, 
or show how often their twigs have been nibbled away, year 
after year. It is curious to watch the long, flexible lips and 
tongue curling around the leaves and tearing them off to be 
munched between the lower front teeth and the horny pad in 
the upper jaw ; but still more comical is it to see the beast pick 
a fallen leaf or tuft of grass, for his neck, despite its length, is 
not long enough for that, so that he has to straddle out his legs 
by jerks, like a photographer adjusting the height of his camera 
on its tripod, until he can reach the ground or get his mouth 
down to the surface of water to take a drink; but that is a 
luxury the modern Kalahari exiles, at least, must go without 
for months together. The giraffe's eyes are very large, dark, 
and liquid, and the expression of its face infantile and gentle ; 
but keepers at the "Zoo" say that it is sometimes viciously ill- 
tempered, and can deliver terrific kicks with both fore and hind 
feet, which are shod with heavy hoofs. 

The horns on the head play no part as weapons even in 
the battles of jealousy between the bulls; and probably are 
relics of structures more useful in the short-necked ancestral 
giraffes. With his present build, the animal could hardly 

293 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




Five-horned Giraffe. 



make any play with weapons of that sort if he had them; he 
would be more likely to break his own neck than harm his 
antagonist. But antlers on the giraffes would be fine things 
for the perching birds! The present "horns" consist of a pair 
six inches or so high between the ears ; and in addition to them, 
in old male giraffes, there rises from the forehead a third 

horn, which is hardly more than a 
rounded boss in the southern species, 
but in the northern one may be a 
distinct horn three to five inches 
high. A third variety, discovered 
lately by Sir Harry Johnston, at 
Mt. Elgon, in Uganda (see Proc. 
Zool. Soc, London, 1901, p. 476), 
has two small additional horns 
behind the principal pair. The two 
hinder knobs are real outgrowths 
of the skull, but the others originate as separate bony pieces 
which, after growing for a time as distinct bones, join tightly 
to the skull. 

The northern species is the one with which the world is most 
familiar by sight, as captives have almost invariably been 
brought from the Upper Nile region, where the animal still 
roves in small bands, and the young are occasionally captured. 
The giraffes about which hunters have mostly written, on the 
other hand, are those of South Africa, originally scattered every- 
where outside the dense forests, but now restricted to the 
Kalahari deserts and the remote interior, whither they are 
constantly pursued by hide hunters, and within a few years, 
probably, will become extinct. Their habits everywhere are 
very simple. They feed morning and evening, rest in the heat 
of the day, and at night visit the drinking place. It is at this 
hour that they are most exposed to attack from their worst 
enemy — lions; but these stalk and seize them in daylight, too. 

294 



HARM ONI O US COL OR A TION 

Andersson 149 relates an incident of his experience near Lake 
Ngami, where a noble bull fought heroically against two lions 
while three others looked on. In the late spring a single 
young one is born, and is able to trot by the side of its dam 
within three days. Selous once saw a giraffe defending her 
newly born calf against two leopards which had pounced upon 
it as it lay in the grass; and with such effect, by striking with 
her fore feet, that she drove the leopards off. Once alarmed, 
the giraffe takes to its heels and gets over the ground in a queer 
camel-like gallop, which it requires a good horse to keep up 
with, so that the chase of the camelopard has always been 
among the most exciting and enjoyable of the African hunter's 
experiences. Every sportsman's book abounds in such remi- 
niscences, and one of the perils involved is that of being stunned 
by one of the flying stones hurled back from beneath the hoofs 
of the fast-striding quarry. 

The coloration of giraffes is very striking and unlike any 
other animal pattern. The familiar northern kind may be 
described as a chestnut-colored animal, marked by 
a network of fine tawny lines. In the South African 
one, on the contrary, large patches of brown or chestnut are ir- 
regularly distributed oveFaTpaler tawny ground color, while the 
under parts, shins, and feet are whitish. There is, however, 
great variation among them in both tint and pattern. 

As we gaze at this always interesting animal in a menagerie, it seems 
as though nothing in the world could be more conspicuous, yet sportsmen 
have always complained of the difficulty of seeing this game in its native 
wilds. Not only is it that "the dappled hide of the giraffe blends harmo- 
niously with the splashes of light and shade formed by the sun glinting 
through the foliage of the trees," but several writers speak of even the sharp- 
eyed natives mistaking its long and motionless neck and legs for we ather- 
b eaten tree tru nks, which to their astonishment suddenly became very 
much alive. Some of Schillings's photographs show this well. 

Until a very few years ago it was supposed that the family 
contained no other living members than the giraffes; but in 

295 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the closing years of the last century Sir Harry Johnston found 
the negroes of the Semliki Valley, on the Uganda border of the 
Congo Free State, using for belts and other equipments the 
skin of an animal which he saw was unknown to science; but 
he was then unable to penetrate the forests where, the Pygmies 
told him, the animal lived. Later the Belgian officers of that 
district secured for him a skin and skull which after a time 
reached London and were set up in the British Museum. Sir 
Harry learned that its native name on the Semliki was okapi or 
"o'api," as the Pygmies pronounced it; and Professor E. Ray 
M . Lankester named for it a new giraffine genus, and 

Okapi. . & & > 

called this animal Ocapia johnstoni. A popular ac- 
count of it was presently prepared by Sir Harry Johnston (with 
a colored drawing which, by permission, has served as the ma- 
terial for our plate) for McClure's Magazine (New York, Sep- 
tember, 1901); and Beddard included a description in his 
"Mammalia" 37 as follows: — 

"The animal is of about the size of a sable antelope and the back and 
sides are of a rich brown color; it is only the fore and hind limbs which 
are striped, the striping being longitudinal, i.e. parallel with the long axis 
of the body. The head is giraffelike, but there are no external horns; 
wisps of curled hairs seem to represent the vestiges of the horns of other 
giraffes. The tail is rather short, and the neck is rather thick and short. 
The skull is clearly girafnne. The basicranial axis is straight, and the 
fontanelle in the lachrymal region is very large." 

More lately the examination of additional specimens enables Professor 
Lankester to decide that the first one received and above described (whence 
the drawing was made) was an immature female ; and it is now known 
that the male has a pair of short, backward-sloping, giraffelike horns. 
In the details of its skull the okapi is extremely close to the extinct Samo- 
therium. "It is probable," he asserts, 137 "that there are two species, a 
smaller and a larger, living both in the forests of the Congo." 

As to its range and habits, Sir Harry learned that it was found 
on both sides of the Uganda border, in the heart of the densest 
forest, where it moved about in pairs and was said to feed wholly 

296 




THE OKAPI 



HAUNTS AXD HABITS OF OK API 

on leaves and twigs. In the German periodical Globus, of 
Dec. 22, 1905, there appeared some additional notes fur- 
nished by an explorer, Dr. J. David, of the district west of Lake 
Albert Edward. From this account it appears that the okapi 
dwells in the most dense parts of the primeval forest, where 
there is an undergrowth of solid-leaved, swamp-loving plants 
and climbers which form a thick and confused mass of vegeta- 
tion. The leaves of these plants are blackish green, grow 
more or less horizontally, and are glistening with moisture. 
The effect of the light falling upon them is to produce along 
the midrib of each a number of short, white streaks of light, 
which contrast most strongly with the shadows cast by the 
leaves themselves, and with the general gloom of the forest. 
On the other hand, the thick layer of fallen leaves on the ground 
and the bulk of the stems of the forest are bluish brown and 
russet, so that the whole effect is precisely similar to the russet 
head and body, and the striped thighs and limbs, of the okapi, 
which could not be seen thirty yards. Dr. David recalls that 
the German explorer Junker recorded in his "Travels" (Reisen 
in Ajrika, 1875-1886; Vienna, 1880-1891) that in 1878 or 1879, 
i:i the Xepo district, he saw a portion of the skin of this animal 
which he mistook for something else ; and he notes that it was 
called by Xepo people "makapi." Dr. David adds that by 
the Arabianized slaves about Lake Albert Edward the animal 
is known as "kenge." There may be two species. 

An interesting incident of the rediscovery of the okapi is 
its identification by archaeologists with certain Egyptian antiq- 
uities not heretofore understood. 

The ideas at the base of their religious mythology led the dwellers along 
the Nile three thousand years or more ago to depict many of their gods and 
demigods with animal heads, symbolic of their origin and jhe God 
traits. Among these a prominent one is Set, brother (and Set - 
murderer) of the great god Osiris. After a rebellious career, he was ex- 
pelled from civilized Lower Egypt, and was reduced to the mean rank of 

297 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



god of the desert, but later he was restored to high regard. The large 
quadruped, described in the hieroglyphics as "red," by whose whole figure 
Set is represented in the earliest monuments, although later merely its 
head was used, or such a head surmounting a human figure, has been 
a puzzle to students. The nearest they could come to it was to guess it to 
be the wild ass, whence have arisen certain baseless myths connected with 

Set. The resemblance of the Set heads 
to the okapi is, however, so apparent, 
that it was at once accepted as the solu- 
tion of the puzzle, although no evidence 
exists that this animal ever was a resi- 
dent of any part of the Egypt of historical 
antiquity, 

Sir Harry Johnston at first thought 
he had found a living specimen of the 
Helladotherium, a fossil predecessor 
of the giraffe occurring in the 
Pikermi (Miocene) beds of Greece, 
which had a neck much shorter than modern giraffes and limbs 
more equal in length. Later fossil species, as Samotherium, 
in which the male was horned, and others, show that the present 
giraffine long neck has been very slowly acquired. Out of the 
direct genealogy, but within the family, is the extraordinary 
animal Sivatherium, found fossil in the Siwalik Hills of India, 
which had two pairs of horns, — the larger on the crown of the 
head palmated and with a few short prongs, and a shorter pair 
just above the eyes. This doubly armed creature (see illustra- 
tion on page 6) was nearly as big as an elephant. 




Okapi Head of Set. 



The Antlered Deer — Cervidae 

It is most comforting to meet, now and then, a group of 
animals so sharply marked by one or more characteristics as to 
be easily bounded and described. Such a well-defined family 
is that of the deer, — the Cervidae. It is enough simply to say 
that a deer is an animal which bears antlers. How antlers 



GROWTH OF DEER ANTLERS 

compare with other horns has already been pointed out ; how 
they are formed is pleasantly sketched by Lloyd Morgan : — 

"Pause as, in autumn, you enter the Gardens by the southern gate, 
before the splendid wapiti, often misnamed the elk by American hunters. 
Is there a more noble and beautiful animal in the Zoo ? See how the antlers 
branch and rebranch and once more branch again ! How proudly he car- 
ries them ! What terrible weapons they are with their sharp bony points ! 
How he clashes them against the bars of his inclosure ! But come again 
in spring or early summer when the antlers are growing. How different 
they look ! How careful he is not to bring them in contact 
with the bars against which he will clash them in the autumn ! o^Antlers! 
They are covered over with a dark skin provided with short, 
fine, close-set hair, and technically termed the velvet. If you could lay 
your hand upon this velvet, . . . you would feel that it is hot with the nutri- 
ent life blood that is coursing beneath it. It is, too, exceedingly sensitive 
and tender. An army of tens of thousands of busy living cells are at work 
beneath that velvet surface building the bony antlers, preparing for the 
battles of autumn. Each minute cell knows its work and does it for the 
general good. It takes up from the nutrient blood the special materials 
it requires; out of them it elaborates the crude bone stuff, at first soft as 
wax, but erelong to become as hard as stone; and then, having done its 
work, having added its special morsel to the fabric of the antler, it remains 
embedded and immured, buried beneath the bone products of its successors 
or descendants. No hive of bees is busier or more replete with active life 
than the antler of a stag as it grows beneath the soft warm velvet. And 
thus are built up in the course of a few weeks those splendid 'beams,' 
with their 'tynes' and 'snags.' 

"When the antler has reached its full size, a circular ridge makes its 
appearance at a short distance from the base. This is the 'burr,' which 
divides the antler into a short 'pedicel ' next the skull, and the beam with 
its branches above. The circulation- in the blood vessels of the beam now 
begins to languish, and the velvet dies and peels off, leaving the hard, dead, 
bony substance exposed. Then is the time for fighting, when the stags 
challenge each other to single combat, while the hinds stand timidly by. 
But when the period of battle is over, and the wars and loves of the year 
are past, the bone beneath the burr begins to be eaten away and absorbed, 
and, the base of attachment being thus weakened, the beautiful antlers are 
shed; the scarred surface skins over and heals, and only the hair-covered 
pedicel of the antler is left." 

299 




Copyright, N. Y. Zoological Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

Stages of Advancing Growth of Antlers on a Wapiti Stag. 

300 



SERVICE OF AXTLERS 

Of what purpose and value is this elaborate headgear, which 
costs annually half the time and strength of the animal, only to 
be thrown away? In the case of the reindeer-cari- Use of 
bou genus the answer seems easy: Weapons of Antlers - 
defense against wolves and shovels to toss aside the snow that 
covers pasturage in winter; but here both bucks and does wear 
them. In all other deer, antlers are produced on the heads of 
the males alone, if at all, and in the case of those whose heads 
are finally adorned with mightily spreading horns, this perfec- 
tion is reached only after several years. Furthermore, for half 
of each year all deer are hornless, and at the very season when 
the does are bearing and attending their young, when the com- 
pany and protection of a well-armed mate would seem to be of 
most service to them. Finally, as a matter of fact, the buck 
trusts more to the striking power of his fore feet than to his 
antlers in warding off such enemies as he cannot run away 
from. It appears, then, that the antlers serve their owners 
mainly in fighting with rival bucks for the possession of does; 
and it is in the gregarious, polygamous kinds that these weapons 
are most fully developed. Antlers are acquired gradually with 
increasing age, 244 starting with the single "spike" of Antler 
the yearling, and proceeding by an added tine each History, 
year until the pattern is completed, seven seasons thus being 
required for the European red deer or the wapiti to perfect its 
head and become a "full stag"; the language of venery has a 
special name for each stage of progress. 

The variations in the antlers of different groups arise from the sup- 
pression of parts; or from their exaggeration, as the prolonged brow tines 
of the reindeer; or from the flattening of a beam or uniting of the tines into 
a "palmated" condition, as in fallow deer, moose, etc. Extraordinary 
duplications and malformations frequently occur, mainly as the result of 
injury to the velvet in the growing stage ; but no points extra to the proper 
pattern are named or counted, except as curiosities. 

A very interesting parallel is found by comparing the slow acquirement 
of a full head by a young buck with the history of the family as exhibited 

301 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

in paleontology. The oldest fossil types are Miocene, and were small 
creatures somewhat akin to the modern muntjacs, but totally hornless. 
Not until the middle of the Miocene has a deer (Dicroceras) been found 
with horns, and they are bifid, and stand upon a long pedicel — also 
muntjac-like. Later came true deer with branching horns which culmi- 
nated in a European species with twelve points on each antler — the cele- 
brated " giant stag" of the Irish peat bogs and similar places, whose pal- 
mated antlers spread ten to twelve feet from tip to tip; it was, in fact, a 
huge fallow deer. 

Some sixty living species of deer are known, mostly American 
and Asiatic. Africa (except the Barbary coast, which is Eu- 
ropean zoologically) has none, nor has Australia. All are much 
alike in having short brittle hair inclined to lengthen about the 
neck and shoulders into a mane, especially noticeable in the 
polygamous, contentious stags, for which it serves as a buckler 
against a rival's horns ; short, well- feathered, and often erectile 
tails; tall, mobile, and expressive ears; big dark eyes, below 
which open great tear ducts; and canines in the upper jaw, 
in some species becoming formidable tusks. In color all are 
some tint of golden or reddish brown, deepening in some Ori- 
ental species to almost black, and elsewhere often showing a 
much darker tone in places, as in the dull chestnut mane of our 
wapiti. There is usually more or less white on the lower sur- 
faces, and pale color about the stern, most conspicuous in such 
kinds as form herds in an open country; but no very striking 
ornamentation of the face appears. Several species, however, 
as the fallow, the axis, and the sikas, are spotted with 
white. 

These spottings have been the text of much speculation on the relation 

between an animal's coloration and its safety from enemies. The idea in 

this case is that the slight spottings increase the deer's chance 
Coloration. , . . . , , 11 <<^ 

of remaining unseen as it stands beneath the trees. One 

could not help noticing," remarks one writer, after watching the dappled 
fallow deer in an English park, "how remarkably their mottled skins, an- 
gular outlines, and branching horns fitted them for concealment in the 
glades of the forest." The conclusion is that the dappled coat harmo- 

302 



VALUE OF A DAPPLED COAT 

nizes beneficially with the splashes of sunlight and shade beneath forest 
trees in summer. Lydekker ^ points out a supporting fact in the circum- 
stance that spotted deer become self-colored in winter, when there are 
no leaves to cast checkered shadows. " Accordingly, the fallow deer ex- 
changes its dappled summer livery for a uniform coat of fawn, more in 
harmony with the somber color prevalent in nature generally during the 
northern winter. A precisely similar change takes place in the Japanese 
deer and its relative, the Peking deer of Manchuria, both of which have 
bright chestnut coats dappled with large white spots in summer, while in 
winter they are clothed in somber brown." The Indian axis, which spends 
its life in herds on the margins of rippling streams with their banks over- 
grown by lofty trees, or in the grassy glades that open out amid the 
exquisite foliage of bamboo clumps, does not make any such seasonal 
exchange of coat, nor does the Philippine axis, but both retain the dappled 
livery throughout the year; this, Dr. Lydekker says, is because they dwell 
in the tropics, where the trees do not become bare. But the East Indian 
hog deer does not conform to this alleged rule. 

It would at once occur to sportsmen that the sambar was neither spotted 
nor changeable ; but Dr. Lydekker explains that that species dwells mainly 
in thick woods, is chiefly nocturnal, and does not need a dappled hide for 
concealment. Xor has it escaped the same competent naturalist that many 
deer, as well as most other hairy animals of northern countries, semiannually 
put on a winter coat paler than their summer dress ; and he regards this as 
in the same category, — that is, as a protective arrangement. But various 
larger influences seem to me to induce this tendency in almost all animals, 
especially ruminants, to whiten in cold climates. Why, for instance, are 
the roe and red deer of the Old World, and our whitetail (cases particu- 
larly referred to), wearing in summer uniform red coats when their haunts 
and habits are practically the same as are said to make a white-spotted 
dress so advantageous for the fallow deer and the chital? Our common 
deer dwells in the edges of the woods, in open glades and along brushy 
river margins, as well as in denser forest, yet is not spotted, though its 
fawns are, as is the case with the young of most uniformly colored animals ; 
it has long been believed that this last fact indicates that primitively all 
these animals were spotted, and that most species have outgrown the 
condition; but why should they do so if it were so advantageous? It is 
apparent that more study is required in this direction. 

The most irregular of the deer, and one which some natu- 
ralists would place in a separate family nearer the Bovidas 

303 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



(it , has, for instance, a gall bladder, possessed by bovine 
ruminants but not by cervine), is the musk deer 
of the highlands of central Asia, from Kashmir 

to Cochin China. 



Musk 
Deer. 



This is the source of .true musk, the product of a large gland beneath 
the skin of the hinder part of the abdomen of the male, connected with 

sexual functions. When fresh, 
musk looks like moist ginger- 
bread, and forms the basis of 
many manufactured perfumes; 
hence the "pods," as the ex- 
cised glands are called, bring a 
high price in market, and the 
deer, despite their almost inac- 
cessible homes and great wari- 
ness, are growing scarce. The 
musk deer is a strange, old- 
fashioned, solitary little creature, 
the size of a half -grown kid, and 
having very large ears, almost 
no tail, and no horns, but wear- 
ing a pair of keen weapons in 
the long upper canines which 
hang well down below the lower 
jaw. The four toes of the feet 
are almost equal, and the hoofs 
so free that they can fairly grasp 
any projection, so that it is not surprising to be told that the animal is a 
marvel of agility and sure-footedness. The long, pithy, and brittle hair is 
dull gray-brown, but fawns are spotted at first. 

Other quaint little Eastern deer are the reddish water deer 
of the reed beds along the Yangtse River, which are singular 
in producing five or six young at a time; and the 
small, blackish, Chinese " tufted deer," peculiar in 
having a pencil of stiff hairs standing upright on the top of 
the head, and half hiding the long pedicels tipped with minute 
stubs of horns. A little in advance of them come the muntjacs, 

3°4 




Musk Deer. 



Muntjacs. 




SOME SMALL DEER 

four species of chestnut-red deer, twenty to twenty-two inches 
high, creeping about the Oriental jungles, and wearing roughened, 
once-forked antlers, mounted upon very tall pedicels. It is not 
upon their tiny horns, but upon dagger play with their tusks, 
that all these kinds of diminutive deer rely for protection against 
wolves and wildcats. Although the Indian muntjac ("kakar" 
or barking deer) is numerous wherever wooded hills abound, and 
its loud, resonant, continuous barking often 
resounds morning and evening close to set- 
tlements, it is rarely seen, for it does not 
feed openly by daylight, nor gather into 
migratory herds. The muntjacs come 
nearest of existing deer to the early family 
type shown in fossils ; and their closest liv- 
ing relatives are the roe deer 93 of Europe, 

. . , Tii- ii A Roebuck. 

which are a little bigger, and have some- 
what more complicated antlers, but resemble them in habits as 
closely as the different circumstances permit. The roe is still 
found wild in Scotland and in many parts of Europe, — in fact, 
thousands come to market annually from the region east of the 
Alps; and it furnishes one of the principal game animals of 
that continent. 227 

The typical deer constitute the genus Cervus, and as a rule 
are of large size and display widely branching antlers. The 
smallest one is the diminutive hog deer or para, ex- 

, . Hog Deer 

ceedmgly common on the low, wet plains of north- and Swamp 

Deer. 

ern India and Burma, 147 where it lurks alone in the 
grass and thickets, and looks and acts like a pig. Kinloch 
mentions that they are often chased on horseback and speared 
by boar hunters. "I have heard," he writes, "of their deliber- 
ately charging a horse; and with their sharp horns they can 
inflict a very severe wound." Next them stands the group of 
Asiatic, semitropical swamp deer, one of which, the bara- 
singha, is prominent among the game of India. Siam has 
x 305 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



another species (Schomburgk's) and the lower Malay Penin- 
sula and Hainan a third (the thamin). They are mainly grazers, 
and are to be looked for in large herds on favorable grass lands 
where they will pasture all day if not much disturbed. 

There comes in here a Chinese deer which is as remarkable 
in its history as in its physical peculiarities, — the "mi-lou" of 
the Peking Chinese, to whom it has been known 
from a remote period as an inhabitant of the vast 
imperial hunting park south of that city. Here herds roamed 
about, and furnished sport for the Court ; but the deer was not 



Mi-lou. 




The Mi-lou, or Peking Park Deer. 

known wild, nor has 'any knowledge been handed down of its 
native place. It was not until 1865, indeed, that its existence 
was known to Europeans, and several years afterward before a 
living specimen reached Europe. Now it is represented in 
many European menageries, and breeds there freely, as might 
be expected .of an animal habituated for many generations to 

306 



MI-LOU AXD SAM BAR 



semi captivity. At any rate, the fact is a very fortunate one, 
for in 1894 the Hun River overflowed and breached the walls 
of the park, allowing the herds to escape into the country, 
where every animal seems to have been killed by the famine- 
stricken peasants. Thus this species of deer, preserved for cen- 
turies only in the Peking park, must now be revived from stock 
carried to the other side of the world out of scientific curiosity. 65 

Pere David's deer, as it is called after its scientific discoverer, is of 
medium size, with a round, donkeylike body, robust limbs, and a tail 
that hangs to the hocks. The color is pale fawn gray, little altered by the 
changing seasons. The antlers are heavy and of the forked type, the hinder 
main prong reaching far backward 
before itself forking; altogether, they 
are unique in pattern, and an addi- 
tional singularity is the fact that in 
England, at least, the bucks shed and 
renew their antlers twice a year. 

Related to the swamp deer by 
the roughened and simple form 
_ . of the antlers is the 

Sambar. 

sambar, — the ordi- 
nary woodland stag of all south- 
eastern Asia, various varieties 
carrying the race clear to the 
Philippines. It wanders about 
in small parties or alone, feeds 
usually at night, and mainly 
on grass and certain wild fruits, 
but also browses much. A good 
sambar stag will weigh five hun- 
dred to six hundred pounds, 
and his antlers will form a triangle of forty-five inches along 
each heavy rough beam and across from tip to tip ; a peculiarity 
is that the shedding sometimes occurs only once in two or three 

3°7 




Copyright, X. V. Z. 51. Soc 

A Japanese Sika 



Sin born, Phot. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




European Fallow Deer. 



years.- The annals of East Indian sport are filled with interest- 
ing experiences in hunting this deer, which presents many a 
difficult problem to the sportsman. In northern India they are 
shot, but in Ceylon, according to Baker, 147 who devotes a whole 

chapter to the mat- 
ter, the custom is to 
chase them with 
hounds, and, when 
the quarry has been 
brought to bay, usu- 
ally in a stream, to 
finish it with a 
thrust of the knife. 
The hair of the 
sambar is so coarse 
and. bristly as to 
deserve almost the 
name of quills, and 
lengthens on the nape into an erectile mane. The color is 
nearly uniform dark brown, but may vary locally to amber 
and gray; and as a rule the fawns are not spotted. 

Very different in coloring, but otherwise closely related, are 

the Eastern spotted deer, — the pretty axis, or chital, and the 

"sika" group of Japan and China, of whose special 

characteristics I have already spoken. It is comical 

to watch a band of these deer in fly time, — every white tail 

whirling on its axis. 

Europe and western Asia have a spotted deer of similar size, 
but with very different horns, — the fallow deer, familiar to all 
Fallow who have strolled through English parks or visited 

any first-rate "zoo." Here we come upon the "pal- 
mated" type of antler, that is, one in which the beam flattens 
out toward its extremity like the palm of. the hand, the terminal 
tines sticking out like fingers. Good fallow antlers may meas- 

308 



HABITS OF FALLOW DEER 

ure twenty-five or more inches along the curve, and are not 
completed until the buck is six years old. In color this deer 
is yellowish dun or "fallow," with whitish spots on the sides 
and white under parts ; the buttocks and under side of the 
rather long tail are white, and the latter is hoisted in moments 
of alarm after the manner of our whitetail. The coat becomes 
grayish in winter, and a variety of great antiquity in Epping 
Forest, England, is dark brown, only faintly spotted. 

The fallow deer is a native of both shores of the Mediterranean, and is 
still found wild in Sardinia and the Grecian islands. Thence it was long 
ago half domesticated throughout Europe, and was taken to the British 
Isles probably by the Roman colonists. " Fallow deer are gregarious to 
a great extent," we are told by Bell, "associating in large herds, the bucks 
apart from the does, except in the pairing season and early winter, when 
the sexes consort in company. Most persons must be familiar with their 
boldness and the confident manner in which they will approach mankind 
where they are well accustomed to his presence; importuning the stranger 
who picnics in Greenwich Park for a biscuit or an apple, which is seldom 
refused. . . . The fallow deer feeds on herbage; it has been noted that it 
is especially fond of horse-chestnuts, which the bucks knock down from 
the branches with their antlers, and the tree is consequently frequently 
planted in deer parks. Fallow deer venison is usually considered much 
superior to that of the red deer, being generally much fatter, but the latter 
is considered by some to have the finest flavor. The skin of both the buck 
and doe is well known as affording a soft and durable leather. The antlers, 
like those of other species, are manufactured into the handles of knives and 
other cutlers' instruments, and the shavings and refuse have always been 
employed in the manufacture of ammonia, whence the name 'hartshorn.' " 

This brings us to the foremost exemplars of all this noble 
and graceful family, — the red deer of the Old World and the 
wapiti of the New. 

The red deer, hart or stag, has been renowned for centuries 
as the noblest object of the chase in Europe, where it once 
ranged throughout the continent and far into Asia, 

11!,, • , Ml Red Deer ' 

and although long ago exterminated as a wild crea- 
ture in thickly settled regions, it is preserved in all parts of 

309 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Europe as an object of the chase or an ornament to the rural 
landscape. To us it is inseparably connected with pictures of 
life in the Scottish Highlands, where tracts of rough hill land, 
called "deer forests," are left vacant mainly to furnish sanctu- 
ary for the herds and sport in deer stalking for the proprietor. 
This manly, exhilarating, and ancient form of the chase is 
celebrated in a fair library of books, 237 and in many a paint- 
ing and piece of sculpture. Wild red deer still also range the 
Devonshire moors, but there they are chased on horseback, 
with hounds, at the proper season, by privileged persons, — 
an imitation of which is the running of a stag practically tame, 
which occurs from time to time at Windsor, near London ; and 
when the hounds overtake the animal (which frequently refuses 
to run at all) it is caught by keepers, before they can harm it, 
and carried home in a cart ! In our forefathers' days the chase 
of the stag was no such farce, of course ; and stag hounds were 
something more than the show dogs to which they have now 
degenerated. In Hungary and South Russia wild deer are got 
by "driving," with the aid of a circle of beaters. 

A fine specimen of the British red deer will nowadays stand about four 
feet tall at the shoulders (the hinds are much smaller), and in summer 
is bright reddish brown, the head and legs being somewhat grayer, and the 
buttock patch yellowish; the fawns are at first white-spotted. In winter 
the coat is longer and grayer. A fine Scotch stag will weigh nearly 300 
pounds ; but a century ago stags were to be obtained weighing 400 pounds, 
the modern depreciation in size and noticeably in the length and spread 
of the antlers being the result of a continual effort to kill the biggest and 
handsomest stags for the sake of their heads as trophies. The deer of 
the Carpathian and Balkan mountains are uniformly largest, and, with the 
maral, represent the central, ancestral stock of the tribe. 

Asia possesses several closely allied forms of red deer, usually esteemed 
distinct species, but Lydekker 236 questions whether it would not be better 
to consider all as local races. One, the maral, inhabits the Caspian prov- 
inces of Persia; another is the hangul of Chinese Turkestan, Kashmir, 
and the western Himalaya, which figures largely in the hunting stories of 
Kinloch, Macintyre, and other Himalayan sportsmen; a fourth is the still 

310 




3" 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

heavier shou of southwestern Tibet, sometimes five feet in height and 
carrying antlers of 55 inches. All these are much larger than the European 
red deer, yet all are exceeded by the great stags of the Thian-Shan range 
and eastward, which are said to stand six feet in height; they vary only 
in minor particulars from our wapiti. The color, habits, etc., of all the 
foregoing are essentially the same, and it is fair to suppose that the whole 
group — including our wapiti — is descended from a common ancestor, 
and is practically one species, perhaps originally of south-central Asia. 

None of all these stags is more stately than the American 

wapiti, — the "elk" of all western men, — which once abounded 

from the Adirondacks and southern Alleerhanies to 

Wapiti. ... to 

California and the borders of Alaska. Everywhere 
of old it was in plenty and easy to kill, and the pioneers swiftly 
destroyed it as civilization was pushed westward, until its 
mighty herds have vanished almost as completely as those of 
the bison. It seemed to make no particular choice of country, 
but thrived anywhere and everywhere, climbing the wooded 
heights of the Appalachians (where the very last one was killed 
near Ridgway, Pennsylvania, in 1869), loafing in the warm, well- 
watered valleys of the Mississippi basin, herding on the sun-baked 
plains, or scrambling up and down the roughest of western 
sierras. Equally broad in its appetite, those that browsed or 
ate mast and fruits in the eastern woods did no better than those 
which grazed on the bunch-grass plateaus from the Rio Grande 
to Peace River; and, undaunted by winter, would keep fat 
where other deer or cattle might starve. 

"Their principal food," says Perry, 1 ' 29 speaking of the West, "consists 
of grasses, mosses, and lichens. In times of continued storms they browse 
and keep fat for weeks on the boughs and bark of maple, alder, willow, and 
cottonwood trees ; but, if the snow is not too deep, they paw the ground 
bare, in order to procure grass,, lichens, and mosses. In the spring they 
follow the receding snows until they reach the higher mountain valleys. 
Here the grass, nipped weekly by frosts, is sweet and just to their taste. 
No sight could be more interesting to the hunter naturalist than to watch 
a herd of elk feeding in one of these secluded mountain valleys. If there 
be a stream running through the valley, bordered by a sand bar, the entire 

312 



WAPITI IN WINTER 



band makes this their sleeping place; and the bands always assume the 
same position in sleeping, — the calves, cows, and yearlings in the center, 
and the bucks around the outer edge of the circle, so that in case of a night 
attack by wolves or panthers the strongest will meet the first onset of the 
foe. ... In winter they gather in large bands and are constantly on the 
move ; while they may not travel out of a small valley yet they are in motion 
seeking food. At this time they develop very hoglike characteristics for 
so grand an animal. With them it is the universal rush of the strong against 




Copyright, N. Y. Zoological Society. 

A Park Band of Wapiti in Winter. 



Sanborn, Phot. 



the weak ; and if the tiny calf of the band paws up a tender morsel of lichen, 
the grandest bull in the circle does not hesitate to drive her away and 
appropriate it himself. The feeding ground of a band of elk in winter often 
resembles a farmyard, the snow being trodden down and packed as hard 
as ice, and the trees, if aspen, birch, or willow, have most of the bark eaten 
off. All the smaller branches within reach are eaten, the animals often 
standing on their hind legs in order to reach the highest." 

This hardihood and cheerful omnivorous disposition make 
the wapiti a very easy deer to keep and rear in a park, since 
they breed in captivity without difficulty; and it is probable 
that they will remain for many years numerous in and 

3*3 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

about the Yellowstone Park, in Jackson's Hole, and along the 
Canadian Rockies, under legal protection. One or two fawns 
Domestic are born at a time, in late spring, in some secluded 
thicket in a plains country, but mountain mothers 
like to go up near timber line for their accouchement. The 
little one is brightly reddish and spotted with white, and for a 
few days simply lies close and quiet, giving forth no scent, and 
not stirring save at its mother's signal. The doe will defend it 
bravely against ordinary enemies, but not against a man. I 
have picked one up and carried it to camp, and had the dam 
follow me like an old family cow; she got her calf again in a 
few moments, but took pains to hide it quickly in a new place. 
No one has sketched the life of the wapiti, and the methods and 
joy of its chase, so completely and delightfully as have Roose- 
velt and Van Dyke, — the former for the northern plains, and 
the latter as he knew the animal in California, — and I wish to 
quote briefly from Mr. Roosevelt 233 : — 

"In its life habits the wapiti differs somewhat from its smaller relatives. 
It is far more gregarious, and is highly polygamous. During the spring, 
while the bulls are growing their great antlers, and while the cows have 
very young calves, both bulls and cows live alone, each individual for itself. 
At such time each seeks the most secluded situation, often going very high 
up in the mountains. ... 

"As the horns begin to harden the bulls thrash the velvet off against 
quaking asp, or ash, or even young spruce, splintering and battering the 
« Elk » bushes and small trees. The cows and calves begin to as- 

Hunting, semble; the bulls seek them. But the bulls do not run the 
cows as among the smaller deer the bucks run the does. The time of the 
beginning of the rut varies in different places, but it usually takes place in 
September, about a month earlier than that of the deer in the same locality. 
The necks of the bulls swell and they challenge incessantly, for unlike the 
smaller deer they are very noisy. Their love and war calls, when heard at 
a little distance, amid the mountains, have a most musical sound. Fron- 
tiersmen usually speak of their call as 'whistling,' which is not a very appro- 
priate term. The call may be given in a treble or in a bass, but usually 
consists of two or three bars, first rising and then falling, followed by a 

3*4 



DUELS OF WAPITI BULLS 

succession of grunts. The grunts can only be heard when close up There 
can be no grander or more attractive chorus than the challenging of a num- 
ber of wapiti bulls when two great herds happen to approach one another 
under the moonlight or in the early dawn. The pealing notes echo through 
the dark valleys as if from silver bugles, and the air is filled with the wild 
music. Where little molested the wapiti challenge all day long. 

"They can be easiest hunted during the rut, the hunter placing them, 
and working up to them, by the sound alone. The bulls are excessively 
truculent and pugnacious. Each big one gathers a herd of cows about 
him and drives all possible rivals away from his immediate neighborhood, 
although sometimes spike bulls are allowed to remain with the herd. 
Where wapiti are very abundant, however, many of these herds may join 
together and become partially welded into a mass that may contain thou- 
sands of animals. 

"The bulls fight desperately with one another. The two combatants 
come together with a resounding clash of antlers, and then push and strain 
with their mouths open. The skin on their neck and shoulders is so thick 
and tough that the great prongs cannot get through or do more than inflict 
bruises. The only danger comes when the beaten party turns to flee. The 
victor pursues at full speed. Usually the beaten one gets off; but if by any 
accident he is caught where he cannot escape, he is very apt to be gored 
in the flank and killed. Mr. Baillie-Grohman ~ 7 has given a very inter- 
esting description of one such fatal duel of which he was an eyewitness on 
a moonlight night in the mountains." 

The accepted order of classification by structural likeness 
requires us to turn next to the moose, — our representative of 
the Old World elk, whose name should have followed it here 
instead of being misapplied to the wapiti ; but unfortunately 
pioneers are rarely men of learning or discrimination in natural 
history, and the first suggestion that comes into their heads is 
likely to fasten itself on the local speech. By good luck, how- 
ever, the Indian name for our elk in New England, musu (in 
western Cree, moosva), said to signify "wood eater," was 
easily remembered, and so we have the excellent term " moose" 
for this greatest of the deer tribe. 

In the prehistoric period the elk or moose ranged as far south in Europe 
as the great mountain barrier, and in America to southern New York and 

3i5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Ohio. It still occurs sparingly in certain large forests of Lithuania and 
central Russia; and on this continent from Maine to western Alaska, 
wherever unfrequented forests remain. It is stated that about thirty-five 
hundred were shot in Maine alone between 1895 and 1905, yet it still is 
numerous in the northern counties, as also in the Maritime Provinces, 
under the enforcement of wise game laws. 







Moose rushing to meet a Challenger 

The moose is a huge, immensely strong and ungainly animal, 

blackish brown with pale legs and belly, and with a neck so 

short that it can graze only by kneeling. A very 

large bull may stand six and a half to seven feet 

high at the withers, which, with the neck, are clothed in a thick 

mantle of long, coarse, stiff hair; and from the throat hangs 

316 



HAUNTS AND HABITS OF MOOSE 

a long hairy strip of dewlap skin (the "bell"), which in old age 
draws up into a sort of pouch. The long and narrow head 
ends in an overhanging, flexible muzzle, which can be curled 
around a twig like a proboscis. On this massive head and 
neck the bulls carry a wonderful pair of flattened antlers, 
always surprisingly wide in spread, but varying greatly in 
weight, and that irrespective of the relative bigness of the 
animal. The moose of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, are 
famous for the immensity and complication of their horns ; one 
pair preserved in the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, have 
a spread of 78^- inches, show 34 points, measure 15 inches 
around the burr, and with the dry skull weight 93 pounds; 
but very few reach such dimensions. 

The moose is everywhere an animal of the forest, especially 
where water is abundant. Roughness of country appears to 
give it no trouble in spite of its weight, for it will Haunts and 
crash through the thickest brush like an elephant. a lts * 
In the East it is exceedingly fond of wading in marshy rivers and 
ponds in summer, even neck-deep, regaling itself on the aquatic 
herbage, or going completely under water to pull up and enjoy 
the bulbous lily roots; but of ordinary grass it eats very little. 
It is a capital swimmer, not fearing to cross rivers or arms of 
the sea miles in width. Its principal diet consists of leaves and 
twigs, preferably the fresh foliage of small hardwood trees and 
willow brush, with some balsam and juniper, which it pulls 
off by curling about the twigs the lips and tongue; and often 
it will bend a young tree over by straddling it with its fore legs, 
and so browse all the top at ease. In the Rocky Mountains 
the food and general habits differ from this in many particulars. 

"In the North and West," says A. J. Stone, in a thoroughly original 
account 233 of the creature, "they do not yard up in winter, and consequently 
do not live much on the bark of trees in that season; do not feed to any 
extent on lily pads; do not run so much in the timber; and in some sec- 
tions they range much higher in the mountains." Mr. Stone seems to have 

3i7 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

been decidedly in error, however, when in this account he asserted that 
moose may not be " called " by a bark horn, as is commonly done in eastern 
Canada. Many trustworthy sportsmen (the latest, Clive Phillipps-Woolley 
in his "Big Game Shooting") established the fact that moose are called 
as successfully in Alaska and British Columbia as in Maine or New 
Brunswick. 

In the autumn the bull moose, their new antlers strong and 
bright, range the woods in search of mates, bawling out invi- 
tation and challenge night and day, and often engaging in 
terrific combats with rivals. At this season they are in prime 
condition as to both venison and robe, and are most easily pro- 
cured, either by being called within shot by means of a birch- 
bark horn imitating their cry, or by more ordinary methods. 
A bull moose is then a dangerous customer when cornered 
or wounded, for he will charge like a locomotive, and kill the 
hunter who cannot get away or stop him with a heavy bullet 
well planted. In May, or later, the mothers hide away and 
bear their young, which are spotted; a favorite lying-in place 
is an island, and the cow will stay upon it until her calf is a 
fortnight old. Calves brought up in captivity become pets, 
and even adult moose are gentle and tractable to an unusual 
degree, so that they have frequently been trained, both in Sweden 
and in Canada, to draw sledges and work like a horse. 

In snowy countries, such as New Brunswick, a moose family, 
with perhaps a stray companion or two, will "yard up," as the 
hunters say, in preparation for winter. 

"About the first of November moose begin to look about for winter 
quarters. These are usually selected with reference to the abundance of 
Winter white birch, maples (white, striped, and swamp), poplar, 

Life * witch-hazel, mountain ash, and the different species of firs. 

While moose are not gregarious, several are often found feeding together 
in what are called 'moose yards.' These yards are simply their feeding 
grounds, and are made by the animals' constant browsing about the pas- 
ture grounds, and are not the result of plan or thought. During the time 
of the falling of the snow they go around browsing, following each other 

3i8 



DEFENSE AGAINST WOLVES 

and unconsciously making paths. Of course, this process is kept up every 
da-y, so that when the snow becomes very deep they have well-beaten roads 
running in every direction over quite a large territory. They have a very 
delicate way of eating, nibbling only a little at a time." 

Mr. Stone tells us, however, that in the Northwest the snow does not 
pile up so deeply as along the Atlantic seaboard, and consequently the ani- 
mals remain in their favorite feeding grounds in the hills until the snow 
either from the winds or the warmth of a coming spring sun takes on a 
crust which will bear the wolf — the only enemy of moose beside man. 
''When the snow is soft the wolf never troubles the moose, for well it knows 
this big deer is more than a match under such conditions; but when the 
wolf can run on top of the snow, the moose is at his mercy; a band of them 
will bring down the most powerful bull. Unlike the caribou, the moose 
is a heavy animal with small feet in proportion to its size, and they can never 
run on top of the snow. The wolves thoroughly understand this, and a 
band will systematically plan an attack and execute their plans with delib- 
eration. Surrounding the moose, some will attract its attention by jump- 
ing at its head, while others cut its hamstrings. To escape this danger, 
northern moose leave the hills in March and April and go down into the 
timber of the lowland, where the snow is yet soft." 

Another flat-horned deer common to both continents is the 
reindeer, which we in America call " caribou." It is peculiar 
among deer in its deeply cleft and broad hoofs, in 

, . i • f i r • i i Reindeer. 

its hairy muzzle, in the shape of its antlers, and 
most of all in the fact that the females are as well antlered as the 
males. In the region where it lives it must fight wolves so 
incessantly that does as defenseless as are those of other deer 
could hardly survive; moreover, it is believed that the horns 
are of essential service as snow shovels in digging after winter 
forage. These suppositions are supported by the fact that the 
fawns get their antlers very young; and a further remarkable 
fact is, that whereas the old males shed their horns in the late 
fall the young bucks and the females retain theirs until spring. 
The strange, slender form and the curious, downward prolonga- 
tion of the brow and bcz tines, often unequally, are shown in the 
accompanying portraits; also the fact that the horns spring 

319 




320 



ARCTIC REIXDEER AND CARIBOU 

from the very top of the skull. They are immensely variable 
in actual and relative weight and size, amount of palmation, and 
number of points. As the shape and relative size of the antlers 
are the principal feature by which are distinguished the many 
so-called species recently separated by some zoologists, we 
may well agree with Dr. D. G. Elliot, one of the most judicious 
of naturalists, that "all these deer, irrespective of habitat, are 
practically one species." 

The reindeer is a northern animal and is growing more and 
more restricted to cold latitudes. In preglacial times, indeed, 
as we know by their abundant remains, 83 these deer visited 
southern Europe, probably in winter, from the north, as vast 
migrations of them still take place from the arctic coasts 
to the interior. The Roman explorers of Caesar's time met 
them in Germany, and even yet they come southward to central 
Russia and the Kirghiz steppes. Northward they have been 
found everywhere except on Francis Joseph Land, thriving, 
in spite of the frigidity of the eightieth parallel or higher, on 
the lichens which cover the rocks of the mountains, and iu 
summer finding grass in the vallevs or seaweed along 

° & - b Barren 

the shore. They thus inhabit Spitzbergen all the Grounds 

i o. -, t i 11 i, , Caribou. 

year round, similarly the most northern Headlands 
of America are reached in summer by the caribou, which hasten 
thither in spring, led by hurrying does. There they feed mainly 
on the marsh plants and seaweeds, drop their young in May and 
June, and begin a return journey as soon, and pursue it as 
fast, as the fawns are able to travel. The scattered family 
parties unite in bands and these into herds, until at last tens 
of thousands together — their brown summer coats changing 
to white as the dark tips of the old hairs break off, and new white 
hairs come in — are hastening southward across the desolate 
Barren Grounds, urged on by the furious storms of early winter. 
There is a continuous loud clattering of hoofs as the crowds 
press on, feeding mainly morning and evening; and so they go 
y 321 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



until they reach the timber south of the Dobaunt Lakes, and 
find shelter and food. They are not known to wander south of 
the Churchill River. 

Half a century ago reindeer were similarly numerous but 
less regularly migratory all through northern Alaska, 201 but 
now are rare there. Vast migrations used to occur in northern 




The Caribou of the Barren Grounds. 

Europe, for Nilsson a century ago described the serried masses 
of the traveling herds on the Norway f jails as sometimes three 
and a half miles in width and packed as closely as sheep. 
That this is not exaggeration is shown by testimony from recent 
explorers of the Barren Grounds, especially the Tyrrell brothers 
of the Geological Survey of Canada (see Report, 1896). Food 

322 



BARREN GROUNDS CARIBOU 

for these migratory millions is furnished by the herbage, moss 
and lichens, and the sprouts of heather, which may be found 
in wind-swept places or brought to light by scraping hoofs and 
snow-shoveling horns. 

On these periodical movements of the reindeer, the unfortunate sav- 
ages who are born to live the narrowest of lives in almost arctic deserts 
of rocks and snow rely for their mainstay of winter subsist- utility 
ence ; many regions, indeed, could never have been habitable of Caribou, 
otherwise. "Every part of the animal is utilized in some way. The flesh, 
of course, is eaten, the stomach and intestines also ; even the points of the 
antlers, when in the soft condition, are considered a delicacy. The leg 
bones are broken for the marrow they contain, which is eaten raw, if wood 
for a fire is not available, and the blood is mixed with meat and forms a 
rich soup. In fact, no part of the animal's body that can be masticated 
is rejected, even the lichens and such vegetable matters as are found in the 
stomach being also eaten. The skin with the hair on is used for clothing, 
and no garment so successfully resists the arctic cold as this, it is so light 
and so impervious to the wind, which always blows a gale on the Barren 
Grounds. When dressed it becomes very soft and pliable, and when a 
number of hides are sewn together they make an excellent tent for summer, 
large enough for a numerous family. Cut into thongs of various sizes, it 
makes very strong bowstrings, wherever those ancient weapons of the chase 
are still used, and lines for nets and cords for deer snares; when cut into 
strings it is called babiche and is used for shoe lacing; in fact, it is utilized 
for the many purposes that civilized peoples employ ropes and cords. A 
split shin bone makes a good knife, and fish hooks and spears are made 
from the horns, while the tendons of certain muscles make very fine and 
strong thread for sewing with the bone needle. . . . 

"Probably no animal is so easily approached as are these Barren Grounds 
caribou in the summer time, and enormous numbers are slain every year, 
so many, indeed, that it would seem the race must become extinct in a com- 
paratively brief period. In their dispositions they are not unlike sheep in 
some particulars, especially in following a leader; and sometimes a herd 
will run the gantlet of a line of hunters simply because one stupid animal 
had gone that way and the rest are determined to follow the lead set them. 
So many caribou have been slaughtered on the barrens and tundras of the 
arctic regions, both east and west of the mountains, that in certain dis- 
tricts their numbers have been greatly reduced, and in some the animals 
have disappeared altogether." 233 

323 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



T5&NS 



In the forested regions of Canada, from Newfoundland and 
Labrador to British Columbia and Alaska, wherever trees grow, 
Woodland ran g es a larger and darker animal, the woodland 
Caribou. caribou. It does not migrate with any great regu- 
larity, although the herds, sometimes large, move about a 
good deal, and its habits are much like those of the moose save 
as to food, since it eats almost everything ; but in Labrador and 
Newfoundland certain lichens and mosses are 
the mainstay. This woodland caribou was 
once to be found well within the bounds of 
the United States, but was early killed off 
south of northern Maine and the Upper Lakes, 
and later in the more settled parts of Canada. 
They are now protected by law. 

They mostly affect swampy places, and 
have little difficulty in wandering where other 
deer would mire because of the spread of 

ren grounds their deeply cleft toes, and the fact that the 
Caribou. 




Showing concave 
tread and sharp 
edge. 



false hoofs are large and low, sustaining a 
part of the weight when the foot sinks. For 
the same reason they travel well on snow; 
while the almost complete absorption of the 
"frog" in winter leaves the hoof hollowed out and with sharp 
edges, which so take hold of the crusted snow or ice that on 
such a surface they make their best speed — a fact especially 
true of the Barren Grounds caribou. 183 They move with a 
swinging trot which is surprisingly rapid, and will, when 
alarmed, run many miles before stopping. This woodland 
variety, exposed to many more dangers in its "forests, has be- 
come an extremely wide-awake and wary animal, whose hunting 
taxes the powers of the sportsmen to the utmost. 

The caribou has never been utilized by any of the people of 
arctic America, although just across Bering Strait the same 
animal was kept in large herds by the Chuckchis of Siberia. 

324 



VALUE OF DOMESTIC REINDEER 



The United States government has attempted to repair this 
deficiency by introducing large numbers of Lapp reindeer among 
the Alaskans, and the experiment is proving successful. 

"The inhabitants of Lapland and Finland, as well as many tribes of 
northern Siberia, have from time immemorial kept the reindeer as a do- 
mesticated animal. The Koreki have herds of forty or fifty Domestic 
thousand, the Laplanders, however, have rarely more than Reindeer. 
five hundred. The latter migrate with their herds, giving them most free- 
dom in September, when the stock is improved by the admixture of wild 
elements. Just before that is the 
usual slaughter time, as the flesh, 
especially of the males, acquires 
an unpleasant flavor at the time 
of the rut. The animals serve 
not only as food, but the hides, 
horns, and sinews are all con 
verted into useful articles of 
clothing, or implements of various 
kinds. The rich, creamlike milk, 
obtained with some difficulty from 
the animals, is made during the 
summer months into small cheeses 
— an important food-article with 
these northern people. It is 
chiefly in Lapland and Norway 
that the reindeer is used as a 
draught beast, and then they 

are only required to pull light, boatlike sledges over the snow. In Kam- 
chatka, however, they are saddled and ridden by the natives, a pad over 
the withers serving as a saddle, and a long staff acting as a substitute for 
the stirrup in mounting. Pack saddles, carrying from seventy-five to one 
hundred pounds, are also placed on the shoulders. The Tungus have 
very often a train of some six to twelve reindeer acting as beasts of burden." 75 

Our common x\merican deer remain to close the list of this 
important family. They differ as a group from all those of the 
Old World in skull structure, and form three groups, the first 
of which includes the white-tailed and black-tailed deer of the 

325 




Lapland Reindeer. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



northern continent, the second the South American brockets, 
and the third the Andean pudu. 

The antlers of the American deer, in fact, are constructed on a plan 
different from those of the wapiti and Old World cervine deer (except the 
Antler roe an< ^ tne m i-l°u) in that there is no brow tine, and the 

Types. antler, instead of bearing points from a beam, forks, as growth 

proceeds, into more or less equal branches. The lower prong is projected 
forward, and the whole antlers curve forward, as is not the case in Cervus. 

Along with this go correlative facts of 
anatomy, thus: in the Old World cervine 
deer and the elk -moose (Plesiometacarpalia) 
the proximal portions of the lateral (second 
and fifth) metacarpals persist, and the 
vomer, or roof bone of the nostrils, is never 
so ossified as to divide them into two dis- 
tinct passages; in the New World deer 
and the reindeer-caribou (Telemetacarpalia) 
the distal extremities of the lateral metacar- 
pals persist, and the vomer sends down a 
vertical plate partitioning the rear of the 
nasal passage. The distinction is a very 
deep and ancient one, for the divergence of 
the two types began as early as the Miocene. Previous to that, however, 
the elk type had been established; and still earlier, most antique of all, 
began the reindeer type, entirely separate from the elk line of descent. In 
the light of these facts, Darwin's remarks 22 have renewed interest. 

Our "common" white-tailed or willow deer — the Vir- 
ginia deer or "mazama" of the older books — is known every- 
where in one or another of its numerous geographical 
races. Eastern specimens stand on the average 
about three and a half feet high in the full-grown buck, the 
females being less, and southern specimens much smaller than 
those of the northern states; but, as in the case of all deer, 
individuals vary greatly in all their dimensions. The smallest 
known are the "dwarf deer" of Arizona. The general color in 
summer is a bright rufous, with the lower parts white, a black 
mark on the chin, and the edge and under side of the plume - 

326 




Head of White-tailed Deer. 



White 
tailed 
Deer. 



WHITE-TAILED DEER 

like, triangular tail snowy white. All the western varieties 
are pale, while those of the damp woods of the Gulf states are 
deepest in tint. The winter coat of long, coarse, crinkled hair 
is much grayer, and hunters speak of the animal as then "in the 
blue." The antlers may attain in an old buck as many as six 
or seven points, but after six years, when five points are attained, 
age is reckoned more by the size and thickness of the antlers 
than by the number of the points. This deer, in one or another 
form, is found from New Brunswick, central Ontario, and 
Manitoba to Florida and southern Mexico ; and a whole volume 
would be required to detail its habits under all the varying 
circumstances it meets. In general, it is a deer of the woods, 
although in the middle West it fed far out on the prairies, and 
there, as is always likely to happen with grazing animals in 
open regions, it formerly gathered into large herds, as it never 
does in forested districts. Nowhere is it more at ease than in 
the Adirondacks, and no one knows it there better than Dr. 
C. Hart Merriam. 48 

"This beautiful and graceful animal," he tells us, "by far the fleetest 
of our Mammalia, roams over all parts of the wilderness, being found high 
up on the mountain sides, as well as in the lowest valleys and river bottoms. 
It frequents alike the densest and most impenetrable thickets, and the open 
beaver meadows and frontier clearings. During the summer season . . . 
its food consists of a great variety of herbs, grasses, marsh and aquatic 
plants, the leaves of many deciduous trees and shrubs, blueberries, black- 
berries, other fruits that grow within its reach, and largely of the nutritious 
beechnut. While snow covers the ground, which it commonly does about 
half the year, the fare is necessarily restricted; and it is forced to subsist 
chiefly upon the twigs and buds of low deciduous trees and shrubs, the twigs 
and foliage of the arbor vitae, hemlock, and balsam, and a few mosses and 
lichens. In winters succeeding a good yield of nuts, the mast constitutes 
its staple article of diet, and is obtained by following the beech ridges and 
pawing up the snow beneath the trees." 

The places where they spend periods of deep snowfall become 
a tangle of trampled paths, as in the "yards" of the moose. 

327 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

In the southern states, as appears from Dr. Bachman's 
extensive and eloquent biography, 90 it cares less for water, 
though everywhere it is compelled to make its abode where 
water may easily be obtained. 

"In winter," he informs us, "it feeds on buds of several kinds of shrubs, 
such as the wild rose, the hawthorn, various species of bramble, the winter- 
Winter g reen > the partridge berry, the deer leaf (Ho pea tinctoria), 
Yards. the bush honeysuckle, and many others. In spring and sum- 
mer it subsists on tender grasses, being very select in its choice and dainty 
in its taste. At this season it frequently leaps fences and visits the fields 
of the planter, taking an occasional bite at his young wheat and oats, not 




Brownell, Phot. 

"Nursing the Velvet-covered Horns." 

overlooking the green corn, and giving a decided preference to a field 
planted with cow peas, which it divests of its young pods and tender leaves. 
... In autumn it finds an abundance of very choice food in the chestnuts, 
chinquapins, and beechnuts strewn over the ground. . . . We once ob- 
served three deer feeding on acorns, surrounded by a flock of wild turkeys, 
all eagerly engaged in claiming their share. The fruit of the persimmon 
tree, after having been ripened by the frosts of winter, falls to the ground 
and also becomes a favorite food of the deer. . . . 

"The deer is one of the most silent of animals, and scarcely possesses 
any notes of recognition. The fawn has a gentle bleat that might be heard 
by the keen ears of its mother at the distance probably of a hundred yards. 
We have never heard the voice of the female beyond a mere murmur when 
calling for her young, except when shot, when she often bleats loudly like 
a calf in pain. The buck when suddenly startled sometimes utters a snort, 

328 



COURTING HABITS OF Will TET AIL 

and we have at night heard him emitting a shrill whistling sound, not un- 
like that of the chamois of the Alps, that could be heard at the distance of 
half a mile. The keen sense of smell the deer possess enables them to 
follow each other's tracks. We have observed them smelling on the ground, 
and thus following each other's trail for miles." 

As in the case of other deer, the bucks and does separate in 
summer, the former nursing the velvet-covered horns, the doe 
hiding away in some secret place and dropping her two fawns 
(spotted) as early as April in the Carolinas, but not until a 
month or so later in the North. The mating season occurs in 
the late fall, and the manner of seeking the does is vividly por- 
trayed by Roosevelt m : — 

"At the beginning of the rut the does flee from the bucks, which follow 
them by scent at full speed. The whitetail buck rarely tries to form a 
herd of does, though he will sometimes gather two or three. Fighting 
The mere fact that his tactics necessitate a long and arduous Bucks, 
chase after each individual doe prevents his organizing herds as the wapiti 
bull does. Sometimes two or three bucks will be found strung out one 
behind the other, following the same doe. The bucks wage desperate 
battle among themselves during this season, coming together with a clash, 
and then pushing and straining for an hour or two at a time, with their 
mouths open, until the weakest gives way. As soon as one abandons the 
fight he flees with all possible speed, and usually escapes unscathed. -While 
head to head, there is no opportunity for a disabling thrust ; but if, in the 
effort to retreat, the beaten buck gets caught, he may be killed. Owing to 
the character of the antlers whitetail bucks are peculiarly apt to get them 
interlocked in such a fight, and if the efforts of the two beasts fail to 
disentangle them, both ultimately perish by starvation. I have several 
times come across a pair of skulls with interlocked antlers. The same 
thing occurs, though far less frequently, to the mule deer and even the 
wapiti." 

In the far West these deer stay in the brushy river bottoms 
among the foothills. They are rarely seen out in the. open or 
high up the mountain slopes ; and hence many call them " willow 
deer." They are hunted in a variety of ways, good and bad; 
and the rank of this chase as a sport depends upon the country, 

3 2 9 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Mule Deer. 



the method, the degree of wariness in the game, and personal 

preference and experience. 
Though the whitetail is scattered throughout the West (except 

California) in favorable situations, the characteristic deer 
from the Plains west is the mule deer or "blacktail." 
It is somewhat larger than the whitetail, and has 

heavier antlers, bearing normally ten points. The body is heavy 

and squarish, the ears eight to nine inches long and thickly 

haired. The base of the tail and a disk around it are white, 

but the end of the tail is conspicuously 
black, and is wagged, not set on end, 
when the animal runs. The coat is 
pale tawny in summer and dark gray 
in winter; forehead dusky; nose, ab- 
domen, and inside of the legs white. 
The antlers have the general shape of 
the whitetail's and fork equally, each 
fork again dividing. "A striking and 
beautiful animal " is the verdict of 
head of mule deer. every one who knows it in nature. To 

the western Indian it was a mainstay for meat and clothing. 

"For me, at least," exclaims A. G. Wallihan, whose field photographing 
of wild deer in Colorado has been so successful, "there is a charm about 
the blacktail or mule deer that no other game possesses. 

"Barring the bighorn, their meat is the best, their hide tans into the best 
buckskin, and you turn from the large elk or the agile antelope to the grace- 
ful beauty of the blacktail buck, and find there the greatest satisfaction. 
The head of the bighorn is a finer trophy, no doubt, and you are led to 
grand scenery in the pursuit of him, but it is heart-breaking work. Where 
you find the blacktail you will find other pleasures, for he delights in the 
most charming bits of country to be found. He will jump up from the tall 
weeds and grass among the aspens, so close as to startle you as you ride 
through them, or will leap into view from the shade of a deep washout far 
in the desert, where he finds in the feed and surroundings something to 
suit his taste. He is crafty also, for if he thinks he is hidden I have known 
him to lie in thick bush until almost kicked out after all sorts of expedients 

33o 




ROCKY MOUNTAIN MULE DEER 

to drive him out have failed. He has, perhaps, the keenest scent and the 
best hearing of all the deer tribe . . . but cannot see as well as the antelope, 
for I have stood within ten or twenty feet of several passing bands which 
failed to distinguish me from a stump or rock." 

Though by no means so numerous as it once was, this deer 
still lingers in most of the rougher parts of its range. In Cali- 
fornia it is partial to the chaparral of the coastal slope anJ 
thicketed mountain valleys. The delightful writings of John 
Muir abound in pictures of the life of this deer in the unvisited 




The Mule Deer of Colorado. 

wilds of the Sierras. Throughout the plains country it is the 
deer of the "badlands," whose rough ravines are filled with 
patches of ash, buck brush, cedar, and dwarf pine ; and among 
the Rockies it frequently resorts to elevations, "where the cover- 
ing is so scanty that the animal must be perpetually on the 
watch, as if it were a bighorn or prongbuck." The most notice- 

33i 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

able peculiarity about this species is its gait, giving it in west- 
ern Canada the nickname "jumping deer." 

" It is a most surprising thing," wrote J. Harrison Mills, "to see a deer 
get up on its legs — at home, I mean, and when he would prefer to be alone. 
... He lies with his four feet under him, and when he is ready 
to go, it is like Jack getting out of the box. The tremendous 
•extensor muscles contract with all the power and facility rest and warmth 
have given them, and the plump body, like a well-inflated rubber ball, pro- 
pelled by a vigorous kick, flies lightly into the air. The simile is borne 
out as it seems about to descend; light as thistle-down it nears the earth, 
another giant impulse from an unseen power — crash — and again it de- 
scribes its light parabola ; — crack — bump — thud — thud — thud — each 
time fainter than the last and your surprise is all that remains." 238 

Roosevelt describes the gait as "a series of stiff- legged bounds, 
all four feet leaving and striking the ground together"; and 
it shows that the animal is accustomed to the hills, where it 
would quickly beat the long stride of the whitetail, so swift on 
level ground ; nevertheless the buck-jumping of the mule deer 
will carry it at a great speed on flat ground, too. In their general 
habits mule deer do not greatly differ from the whitetail; and 
though sometimes in winter large numbers gather together, 
they are not so polygamous nor so gregarious as either the 
wapiti or the caribou. It has been found much more difficult 
to keep them and cause them to breed in captivity than in the 
case of the others. 

The Columbian blacktail is a distinct species, decidedly 
smaller, and with much more black on the tail, which dwells 
in the forested coast ranges of the Pacific coast 
from northern California to the borders of Alaska. 
It sticks to the woods, and penetrates where they are so dense 
that it is almost impossible to follow it; and is able and 
willing to climb to the alpine pastures on mountains so steep 
and rough as almost to defy human feet. 

Mexico has a species or variety of the whitetail, which is 
known southward nearly to the Isthmus; and south of that, 

332 



SOUTH AMERICAN DEER 

in the drier and more open parts of Ecuador and Colombia, 
occurs -an allied species with large, flapping ears, of .which 
the outer surface is naked. The borders of the great Tropical 
rivers that unite to form the Parana and La Plata are Deer * 
the home of the larger "guazu," or marsh deer, so called from 
its predilection for morasses and its fondness for wallowing in 
mud; its antlers are long but only twice forked. Smaller, 
and with still more simple antlers, are the "guazuti," or pampas 
deer, common all over the grassy plains of southern South Amer- 
ica, and possessed of many interesting peculiarities, while con- 
forming in general to the family manner of life. 53 They lie 
concealed during the day in the tall, 
feathery pampas grass, and come out 
to feed at night. The antlers are 
very straight when seen in profile, 
with two prongs on the front of each 
horn. In the Andes occur two other 
deer, the "guemals," of medium size, Chilean Pudu. 

provided with tusks, and having antlers with a single fork, of 
which the front one is the longer and projects straight forward; 
one kind is numerous in southern Chile, and the other in the 
highlands of Peru. 

In Central America the little Costa Rican deer 114 is a well- 
separated form with spikelike antlers, which seems to connect 
the foregoing group with the fine South, American brockets — 
a section distinguished by short, unbranched antlers, naked 
muzzles, and other specialties. There are four kinds, the 
largest about twenty-seven inches high at the shoulders, and the 
smallest only nineteen inches, which are denizens of the forest 
glades of Brazil and the northern coast countries, go about only 
in pairs, apparently mated for life, and furnish good sport and 
toothsome venison. The list closes with a remarkable little deer, 
the "pudu" of the Chilean Andes, which is scarcely larger than 
a hare, is reddish brown, and has a curiously short and rounded 

333 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

head with short, ovate ears, and on the male an apology for ant- 
lers in the shape of two tiny spikes rising from the forehead. 

This concludes the Ruminantia termed "Pecora" (oxen, 
sheep, goats, antelopes, giraffes, and deer), which agree in hav- 
ing horns, two functional toes (only), and the metapodials 
fused into a cannon bone. There remain two other small divi- 
sions of ruminants, — the camels and the chevrotains. 

The camels and llamas (or " yahmas ") form a group (Tylo- 
poda) very much older than the ruminants, and of American 
Ancestry of origin. That the camel got the pads on his feet, the 
Camels water- pockets in his stomach, and other drought and 

sand resisting arrangements from an ancestry that began in the 
western United States a million years or so ago, is the novel and 
interesting outcome of discoveries by Cope, developed still further 
by Dr. Wortman and his assistants of the American Museum in 
New York. 239 These scientific explorers brought to light a series 
of skeletons showing that the camel race, now confined to the 
desert regions of Africa and Asia, originated in North America, 
and was developed there along a line of adaptative growth. 

It must be remembered that in the early Tertiary there was a slow but 
persistent upheaval of the Rocky Mountain region, where a vast plateau, 
studded with lofty sierras, gradually freed itself from the sea. In those 
sierras were many active volcanoes, whose outpourings of volcanic dust 
settled and solidified into rock, forming the whole thickness of many well- 
known fossiliferous formations. The basins between the mountain ranges 
contained vast quiet lakes, of which Great Salt Lake is a relic, into which 
dead animals would drift and their bones become fossilized; and also desert 
spaces, constantly extending, where winds blew the light soil about, and 
gradually buried dead animals and perhaps frequently smothered and 
entombed many of those whose skeletons show so astonishingly little sign 
of disturbance. In the very oldest of these rocks, at the dawn of the Eocene, 
have been found what some geologists consider the primitive ancestors of 
the camel, — small creatures, little known ; but the upper Eocene beds 
yield skeletons of whose affinity to ordinary camels there can be no doubt. 
These belong to an animal named Prototylopus, which was hardly larger 

334 



EVOLUTION OF CAMELS 

than a jack rabbit, and of course very uncamel-like in general aspect. It 
had, for instance, four distinct and equally important toes, protected by 
hoofs, on the fore feet (but only two toes reached the ground on the hind 
feet), and the metapodials were entirely separate. The teeth were "buno- 
dont," that is, their crowns were formed by a pavementlike arrangement 
of rounded tubercles, as in modern pigs, fit only for crushing soft food ; 
short canines and upper incisors were present, and there was no diastema. 
The skeleton of these early forms is more llamalike than cameloid. The 
next advanced form is greater in size, and the lateral toes are no longer 
useful, but hang to the side of the foot above the ground like a deer's. In 
the next, from the lower part of the White River Miocene deposits of 
Wyoming, the size has increased to that of a coyote. Then follow a series 
of improvements on lines parallel with the evolution of the early horsed, 
size increasing, the teeth becoming more suitable to grazing uses, the 
metapodials tending more and more to solidify, and the external appear- 
ance gradually approximating modern examples of the tribe. 

At the close of the Miocene, a dispersion of the race began. Changes 
took place in geographical and climatic conditions which made the plateau 
of the western United States unfavorable for them. One branch migrated 
somehow into the Old World, and finding a suitable country in Africa and 
southern Asia, persisted and developed there into the two existing species 
— the single-humped Arabian and the double-humped Bactrian. Another 
side branch made its way into South America and found a congenial home 
upon its open southern plains, where it developed into the somewhat sheep- 
like huanaco and vicunia. Here there was firmer, stonier ground, less 
need for the great sustaining pad beneath the foot, and more need for speed ; 
hence these South American forms show smaller pads and the nails are 
more hooflike. This gives us the explanation of the odd present geo- 
graphical distribution of the camel family. 

Nevertheless, the total extinction of North American camels was ex- 
tremely slow, and allowed time for the development of local forms all 
through the Pliocene and Pleistocene, or closing epochs of the Tertiary 
era. One of these was a queer, aberrant form a third larger than the mod- 
ern dromedary, which must have towered up like a giraffe as it grazed upon 
our western plains of those days. Another, that lived near the close of 
Pleistocene times, was so like the true camels of our day that Dr. Wortman 
believes it may have been their ancestor. 

The camels, then, have always been creatures of the world's 
desert places, and all their extraordinary peculiarities, outward 

335 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

and inward, from their sole pads and protectively dun coats 
to the ample, sphincter-closed, water-storing sacs in their stom- 
achs (rumens), are adaptations to a desert home. 

We do not know when or where camels were first found wild 
by mankind; nor even whether the single-humped "Arabian" 
utility of camel is a native of Arabia or Africa. Papyrus 
records show that it was well known in Egypt at 
least thirty-two centuries ago. So-called wild camels, small 
and gaunt, range the desolate sandy plateaus of northern Tibet, 
but it is probable that they are feral remnants of the herds of 
the people who built the cities there which long ago were over- 
whelmed by drifting sand. This animal cannot be said to have 
been anywhere domesticated, but only subjugated. Without 
its reluctant aid the crossing of deserts, and the rise of the locally 
mighty civilizations of the ancient Oriental world, could never 
have been accomplished in Asia, Arabia, or North Africa. It 
has been developed against its will into many forms, some 
swift and elegant, others strong but more ugly than the original 
type, yet immensely serviceable both as baggage and draught 
animals, and for an almost universal utility. 

"A camel differs from a dromedary in nothing save blood and breed. 
The camel is a pack horse; the dromedary a race horse. The camel is 
thick -built, ungainly, jolting; the dromedary has finer hair, lighter step, 
is easy of pace, and more enduring of thirst. A caravan of camels is a 
freight train; a company of Oman 'thelul' riders is a limited express. 
The ordinary caravan travels six hours a day and three miles an hour, but 
a good dromedary can run 70 miles a day on the stretch. A tradesman 
from Aneyza told Doughty that he had ridden from El Kasim to Taiff 
and back, a distance of over 700 miles in fifteen days ! Mehsan Allay da 
once mounted his dromedary after the Friday midday prayer at El Ely, 
and prayed the next Friday in the great mosque at Damascus, about 440 
miles distant. ... 

"The Arabs have a saying that the camel is the greatest of all bless- 
ings given by Allah to mankind. . . . His long neck gives wide range of 
vision in desert marches, and enables him to reach far to the desert shrubs 
on either side of his pathway. The cartilaginous nature of his mouth 

336 



THE ARAB'S DEBT TO HIS CAMEL 

enables him to eat hard and thorny plants — the pasture of the desert. 
His ears are very small, and his nostrils, large for breathing, are specially 
capable of closure by valvelike folds against the fearful simoon. His 
eves are prominent, but protected by a heavy overhanging lid, limiting 
vision upward, and guarding from the direct rays of the noon sun. . . . 
His hump is not a fictional but a real and acknowledged reservoir of nutri- 
ment, as well as nature's packsaddle for the commerce of the ages. . . . 
"The Arabian domicile is indebted to the camel for nearly all it holds. 
All that can be obtained from the camel is of value. Fuel, milk, excellent 
hair for tents, ropes, shawls, and coarser fabrics are obtained from the 
living animal ; and flesh food, leather, bones, and other useful substances 
from the dead. Even the footprints of the camel, though soon obliterated, 
are of special value in the desert. A lighter or smaller foot would leave no 
tracks, but the camel's foot leaves data for the Bedouin science of athar, — 
the art of navigation for the ship of the desert. Camel tracks are gossip 
and science, history and philosophy to the Arab caravan. A camel march 
is the standard measure of distance in all Arabia, and the price of a milch 
camel the standard of value in the interior. . . . Camel's milk is the 
staple diet of thousands in Arabia, even though it be bitter because of 
wormwood pasturage." — Zwemer, Arabia, the Cradle of Islam. 

In all these centuries, however, little if anything has been 
gained toward sympathetic association between the beast and 
its master. "The want of bodily beauty is accompanied by a 
viciousness of temper and general stupidity of disposition which 
can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere among domesticated ani- 
mals." Before long it will be superseded by railroads. 

We are accustomed to think of this animal as belonging only 
to the heated sand wastes or rocky plateaus of the arid belt 
stretching from India to Morocco and Somaliland ; but the two- 
humped "Bactrian" camel is a northern form as enduring of 
cold as is its southern fellow of heat; and the overland trade 
between China and Russia, across the plains of Mongolia or 
Turkestan, proceeds by caravans of these animals amid the 
snows of winter as well as through summer's dust. 

"Every year toward spring," the Abbe' Hue noted in Mongolia, "the 
camel loses its hair, and it all goes, to the last fragment, before the new 
z 337 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



comes on. For about twenty days it is as naked as if it had been clean- 
shaven from head to tail; and then it is exceedingly sensitive to cold and 
rain. . . . But by degrees the hair grows again; at first it is extremely 
fine and beautiful, and when once more it is long and thick, the camel can 
brave the severest frost. It delights then in marching against the north 
wind, or standing on the top of a hill to be beaten by the tempest and breathe 
the freezing air." 

In the huanaco and vicunia of South America, we have the 
survivors of an original cameloid stock, as has been related, — 

humpless, long-eared camels of small 
stature, which carry their heads erect 
and behave more like antelopes or 
deer, whose place they take in the 
southern continent. 

The huanaco occurs wherever open 
districts and a temperate climate 
coincide, from the lofty valleys of 
Ecuador down the whole length of 
the Andes, all over Patagonia, and on 
the rough and grassy islands south 
of the Straits of Magellan. In the 
mountains it travels in small bands, 
and has the same agile and wary 
manners as the vicunia; but on the 
plains it naturally gathers into herds, 
especially during the pairing season, 
at its height in August. There these animals seem to thrive 
as well upon the thorny and bitter herbage of lower Patagonia 
as upon the rich pastures of the Andean valleys or the Argentine 
pampas. 

"Over a large part of its habitat none but salt water is to be had, and 
this it drinks readily. One very curious circumstance in its history is its 
habit of resorting to certain places in river valleys when it feels ill, so that 
nearly all which die a natural death seem to do so at these spots. This has 
been plausibly explained 35 as due to the influence of an instinct inherited 

338 




Copyrt, N. Y. Zool. Soc. Sanb. 

An Alpaca. 



HISTORY OF THE LLAMA 

from the time when the country was much colder, and when, whenever 
storms or other distress afflicted the animals, they were accustomed to seek 
a covert in the bushes which grew only alongside the sunken streams." 
They furnish the principal flesh food available to the nomads of Patagonia, 
and also their main resource for tentage, clothing, and leather, and are 
persistently hunted by the cattle herders and steadily encroaching farmers, 
so that their former abundance is much diminished. A fully grown male 
huanaco stands about four feet high at the shoulder, and is covered with a 
thick coat of long, almost woolly hair, pale reddish in color, and longest 
and palest on the under parts. Domestication is possible, but now is car- 
ried no farther than here and there to make a pet of uncertain temper and 
fidelity. Yet in the prehistoric past, taming and artificial breeding estab- 
lished from this stock two truly domestic animals of the utmost importance, 
— the llama for work and the alpaca (properly, "el paco") for wool. 

The llama became a domesticated beast of burden among 
the natives of Peru unknown centuries before the Spanish con- 
quest, and still serves as the only trustworthy carrier 
in the higher Andes, although in certain parts it has 
been largely superseded of late by mules, horses, or railroads. 
It is astonishing to read of its primitive abundance, Spanish 
chroniclers relating that three hundred thousand were used 
for transportation at San Luis Potosi alone during the flourish- 
ing development of the silver mines following the Spanish 
seizure of the country; yet only the males carry burdens, 
females being kept for milk and flesh. The load seldom ex- 
ceeds one hundred pounds, for if it is too heavy the animal lies 
down and obstinately refuses to move until it is lessened to his 
liking. In the rougher and more secluded parts of the Peru- 
vian mountains large herds still exist, and long trains may be 
met walking docilely in single file, attended by a few Indians 
and making a dozen miles a day, feeding by the wayside as they 
march, for the animals will not graze at night, — indeed, in 
many ways they are extremely vexatious and unamiable, and few 
men other than the Andean Indians are able to manage them. 

"A flock of laden llamas journeying over the tablelands," as Tschudi 241 
describes it, "is a beautiful sight. They proceed at a slow and measured 

339 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

pace, gazing eagerly around on every side. When resting they make a 
peculiar humming noise, which, when proceeding from a numerous flock at a 
distance, is like a number of ^Eolian harps sounding in concert. The Indians 
are very fond of these animals. They adorn them by tying bows of ribbon to 
their ears, and hanging bells round their necks; and before loading they 
always fondle and caress them affectionately. If, during a journey, one 
of the llamas is fatigued and lies down, the arriero kneels beside the animal 
and addresses to it the most coaxing and endearing expressions. But not- 
withstanding all the care and attention bestowed on them, many llamas 
perish on every journey to the coast, as they are not able to bear the warm 
climate." Squier, in his "Peru," gives other interesting details. 

A large llama stands about three feet high to the shoulder and 
four and a half feet to the top of the head. It may be of almost 
any color, but is usually brown or a mixture of yellow and black, 
frequently speckled, rarely quite white or black. The flesh is 
spongy, coarse, and not of agreeable flavor ; and the animal has 
an extraordinary defensive habit of spitting forcibly at any person 
or animal offending it — ejecting not only saliva, but the 
contents of its stomach; and the discharge is likely to injure 
a man's eyes severely. The hair or wool is inferior to that of 
the alpaca, but is used for similar purposes ; that of the female 
is the finer. The llama has been introduced with the alpaca 
into Australia, but has never become generally useful. 

The paco or alpaca is a smaller variety, mostly confined to 

Peru and adjacent provinces of Chile, where it is bred for the 

sake of its fleece. In the prehistoric days, as now, 

A1d£LC£L 

the Indians herded it in great semidomesticated flocks 
in the loftiest valleys, where these animals have formed interest- 
ing instincts and habits of vigilance and protection against 
sudden storms and snowfalls. 

"Once a year the Indians drive their flocks to stone inclosures or huts 
and shear the wool, after which the flocks are again turned loose. This 
custom is prehistoric, and it is stated that many of the shearing huts 
about Lake Titicaca have stood there since long before the Spanish con- 
quest. . . . The alpaca's coat consists of a thick growth of woolly hair, 
varying from black to gray or yellowish, and reaching, when unshorn, a 

34o 



HABITS OF THE VICUNIA 



length of some two feet. The annually shorn fleece is about eight inches 
in length. The fiber is small but strong, elastic, very lustrous and silky, 
and highly valued for weaving warm and fine cloth. The natives of the 
Andes have made use of it from time immemorial for their ponchos or 
blankets, remains of which have been found in the oldest graves of the 
period of the Incas; but it was not until 1836 that the wool began to be 
exported to Europe and the manu- 
facture of alpaca shawls, cloth, 
etc., regularly began." 20 

A different species from 
the huanaco and its varieties 
is the Andean vicunia, and 
it is a handsomer animal 
than the others. In size it is 
between the llama and the 
paco, and is distinguished by 
a longer, more slender neck, 
and the superior natural fine- 
ness of the soft, curly wool. 
The crown of the head, the 
upper part of the neck, the 

back and thighs, are of a peculiar reddish yellow hue locally 
called "color de vicuna." The lower part of the neck and 
inside of the limbs are bright ocher, and the abdomen white. 
This animal is a true mountaineer, inhabiting the heights 
of the Cordillera wherever pasturage can be found short of 
the naked summit-rocks, and is as alert and wary as mountain 
goats. Tschudi tells us that the male who leads the band keeps 
a watchful guard over his family, and on a suspicion of danger 
signals the alarm by a whistling sound and stamping of the foot, 
whereupon all take to flight. 

The Indians from time immemorial have taken them by a 
method called "chacu." A large company go up a mountain 
and build a great pound formed by a rope dangling with colored 
rags and stretched on low posts. Then a wide space of the 

341 




A VlCUNIA. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

mountain side is " driven," and when as many vicunias as 
possible have been trapped within the inclosure, the men kill 
with their bolas all which do not muster courage enough to 
jump over the dreaded fence. These customs still survive, 
though the animals are by no means so numerous as formerly. 
The skins go as tribute to the church. Tschudi describes a 
chacu in which he took part, and adds : — 

"Under the dynasty of the Incas, when every useful plant and animal 
was an object of veneration, the Peruvians rendered almost divine worship 




African Water Chevrotain. 



to the llama and his relatives, which exclusively furnished them with wool 
for clothing and with flesh for food. The temples were adorned with large 
figures of these animals made of gold and silver, and their forms were rep- 
resented in domestic utensils of stone and clay." 

One small group of ruminants remains, the Tragulina or 
chevrotains, the living representatives of which are some pretty 
little hornless "deerlets," a foot or so in height, 
and with legs like pipestems, known by East Indian 
sportsmen as mouse deer. The kanchil and other Malayan 
species are uniformly reddish or brown, with white markings 

342 



Chevrotains. 



CHEVROTAINS AND PECCARIES 

on the chest and belly, but the one common in Ceylon and India 
has spotted flanks. They hide in the jungles and rocky places 
and serve the Malays as a type of cunning and cleverness; 
they will assure you even that when a kanchil or napu is chased 
by dogs he will spring into the air, hook his musklike tusks 
over a tree branch, and swing there out of reach until the dogs 
get tired and go away. West Africa has a handsomely spotted 
chevrotain addicted to marshes and rivers. The principal 
interest attached to these deerlets is that they are very ancient, 
having changed little from their far more widely distributed 
ancestors in the Miocene and Pliocene periods; and in their 
teeth, the separateness of their metapodial bones, the fact that 
the stomach has only three chambers, etc., they show features 
from which the remainder of the ruminants long ago diverged. 
They therefore serve as a sort of bridge by which we may pass 
easily to the last section of the artiodactyls, the Suina or 
swine and hippo, which do not chew the cud ; have a complete 
dentition; have simple, not chambered, stomachs; the bones 
of the feet not united into a cannon bone; and in most cases 
four toes reaching the ground. 

The most specialized of the pigs are our southern peccaries, 
the only native American swine, which approach the rumi- 
nants in having only thirty-eight teeth; in having 
but three toes on the hind feet (lacking the fifth), 
and the two central metapodials fused at the top; and in the 
fact that the upper tusks are directed downward. An alto- 
gether unique feature is a large gland, navel- like and skin-deep 
in the middle of the back, secreting a vile-smelling oil, the stench 
of which infects the whole neighborhood of the haunt of a band. 
This gland must be immediately cut out of any animal intended 
to be eaten, but the flesh at best is not very desirable. 

Peccaries are small, thin-legged, grizzled-black pigs, with 
very thick, bristly necks and large, angular heads. They have 
wicked little eyes, razor-sharp tusks in both jaws, and no visible 

343 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

tail; and the young (two) are not striped. There are two 
kinds, — the commoner collared peccary, which is distributed 
from Arkansas (but is now rare north of the Rio Grande Val- 
ley) through tropical America to northern Patagonia, and has 
such local names as "tajacu" and "zahino"; and the more 
restricted white-lipped peccary, or "warree," not seen north 



\ 1 

Ml 


1 •^ 








1 


./v^r 




**» 








/fc^ f 


?. ■ V,- , 


y* 


V 






v% 


;; 




^J 




jp— 


-\f - <% . 






V 


• -JL& w 


■Jim*" y^SK- 




=*X 



Collared Peccaries. 



of Honduras. The former is about thirty-six inches in length 
and has a faint, collarlike streak on the withers ; the latter is 
larger (forty inches), is darker, and has the lips and chin white. 
They are so nearly allied that they will interbreed. The col- 
lared peccary goes about in small bands, which make their 
home in wet thickets, and sally out at night in search of food, 
which in Texas and Mexico seems to be mainly pecans and 
similar nuts, with roots, mushrooms, and other vegetables, 
plus such flesh and carrion as are obtainable. Near settle- 
ments they are likely to enter and greatly damage gardens and 
crops. When pursued they run in open ground with great 
fleetness ; and in cover will squat and dodge like a jack-rabbit. 
Though peaceable enough under ordinary circumstances, 

344 



WARREES AXD THE JAGUAR 

when brought to bay they will fight with courage, and inflict 
severe wounds with the sharp tusks. 32, t,s 

The warree has much the same mode of life, but after the 
breeding season collects into larger herds, sometimes number- 
ing one hundred or more, and they are credited with 

Warree. 

an innate ferocity which leads them to attack any- 
thing they see, and is irresistible. This disposition has per- 
haps been exaggerated in popular stories. "If you meet a 
flock of warrees in the bush," says Salvin, 114 "and you take no 
notice of them, it is probable that they will take no notice of 
you. But if your intentions are hostile . . . you must take 
care to place yourself in a safe position before you carry your 
design into execution." They have a particular enmity to- 
ward the jaguar, and with good reason, for he regards them as 
an especial prey, yet must be cautious in his hunting, since the 
instant he has seized one the others rush to the rescue, and if 
he is not quick in leaping with his catch to some limb or rock 
out of their reach, they are likely to cut him to pieces by force 
of numbers and reckless valor. 

Remains of larger peccaries are found as fossils in the Brazilian 
caverns and other American Pleistocene deposits; and earlier fossil 
forms of the Miocene and Pliocene of both the Old and New Worlds, 
such as Hyotherium, connect the peccaries with the true pigs, proving 
common ancestry. 

The true swine (Suidae) are confined to the Old World and 
are distinguished by their long, pointed heads and mobile 
snouts, with fortv bunodont teeth, ending in an 

Swine. 

abrupt fleshy disk containing the nostrils and so 
tough that with it they can plow up the forest mold for the roots, 
tubers, agarics, and other goodies of which they are fond. 
Each foot has four toes, but the central two carry the weight, 
the others helping in miry places. The exemplar of the family 
is the wild boar, which, where it has not been exterminated, 
ranges throughout Europe, northern Africa, and Asia Minor; 

345 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

eastward of that many other kinds have been named, some of 
which are doubtless descendants of introduced and once domes- 
tic stock. Thus the South Sea Islands got the black pigs found 
free and numerous on many of them by the first European 
navigators; already in New Zealand a wild race ranges the 
woods and affords good sport, as might our own southern 
razorbacks ; and Nepal and Bhotan possess a half- wild pygmy 
race no larger than hares. The latest monographer reduces 
the whole list, however, to four typical species, of which three 
belong to certain Malayan islands, leaving all those of the 
mainland and far-eastern archipelagoes, from Great Britain 
to Japan and the Philippines, as varieties of the common wild 
hog (Sus scrofa) . The brick-red, tassel-eared, playful river hogs 
of southern Africa are scarcely separable. 

From this widespread and variable species the domestic pigs have been 
derived by processes of selective breeding and intermingling, such as have 
Domestic produced so many other domestic races. The closely related 
gs ' Javanese and other Oriental hogs have also been in domes- 

tication since antiquity ; but other genera of swine than Sus seem incapable 
of adaptation to human service. It is a curious circumstance that while 
the young of all kinds of pigs are light -striped, it is very rare that such 
markings appear in domestic piglings; but feral races, reverted to the 
woods for a century or so, gradually get back to it. Domestic pigs also 
show a noticeable concavity of the face not seen in wild ones, and their 
tusks never grow very long. Much benefit accrued to European hogs by 
crossing them with imported boars of Siamese and Chinese stock. The 
most extraordinary of domestic swine is probably that Japanese " masked" 
breed which so much interested Darwin. 69 

The intelligence of pigs is far greater than one might expect from their 
appearance. Hunters have a high respect for their strategy when chased 
and scheming and fighting for their lives. From early times trained pigs 
have been among the trick animals of showmen, and as pets they have been 
good-tempered and perfectly cleanly. Some "educated" pigs have been 
credited with wonderful feats of reading, counting, selecting fortune-telling 
cards, and the like ; but too much humbug has been mixed with this to let 
us judge by it of the animal's real mental capability. That it is by no 
means dull is shown by the readiness with which in southern Europe it is 

346 



WAYS OF THE WILD BOAR 

trained to find truffles. This is in the direct line of natural ability; but 
pigs have more than once, since that famous instance first recounted in 
Denick's "Rural Sports" (London, 1801), been taught to act the part of 
a dog in bird shooting. They show surprising sagacity at this work and 
a great fondness for the sport; and some declare they exceed the pointer 
himself in "pointing." 



Wild 
Boar. 



The wild hog loves moist ground and a chance to wallow in 
water, but takes care to indulge in these delights where cover 
is handy, to which he may retreat for his noonday 
nap, or at the threat of danger. In the wilderness 
he is by no means nocturnal, but where he is often disturbed 
soon learns to show himself as little as possible. This is 
especially true of old boars, 
which lead solitary lives for 
the most part, while the 
sows and voung go about 
in "sounders" of a dozen 
or so individuals. Such 
bands are the scourge of 
careless cultivators from 
Egypt to China, since they 
break through the flimsv 
fences and root up or 
trample down crops, espe- 
cially sugar cane, often 
coming miles from the hills 
to enjoy such a raid. In 
India, indeed, they like to 
settle down in the growing 

fields, especially at the breeding season, and have developed 
the habit of making huts. These may be constructed among 
sugar-cane or millet, or in the long grass at the jungle's edge, 
and a Burmese "pig camp" was thus described by a Field 
correspondent in 1900: — 

347 




A Charging Boar. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"On my return from a day's sport after sambar near the small and out- 
of-the-way village of Kan, I came upon a number of what first appeared to 
me to be ant-hills, but were really grass heaps. They were in the form of 
thatch, made of teak leaves, kine grass, and twigs, closely interwoven so as 
to be impervious to rain. These so-called little ' pig huts ' are two feet thick 
in thatch, three and a half feet high, five feet in length, oval in shape, with 
one small exit, and in the majority of cases partially closed. On this occa- 
sion there were about ten or fifteen in number in close proximity to each 
other, about twelve to fifteen feet apart." 

In such huts the sows hide their litter until the sucklings are two or three 
weeks old, carefully closing the entrance whenever they leave them. An- 
other correspondent reported that in Ceylon he had seen similar huts built 
by two pigs, usually boars, one lying down and the other plucking up 
grass and so forth, and piling it over its companion. "Their occupation 
does not seem to last more than a day or two, and then only during wet 
weather. I have once known a wounded pig to take refuge in a hut." 

Their food is not wholly vegetable, for they seize on worms, 
mollusks, lizards, snakes, and anything else fleshly that falls 
in their way, including carrion, and so are of service as scaven- 
gers. Along the seashore they fatten on shellfish, and in Assam 
dig up a kind of fish which in the dry season buries itself in mud. 

An old boar will stand thirty-five to forty inches tall, and may 
weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. He is impervious in 
wiry bristles, and armed with enormous canines (tusks), of 
which the upper pair turn up as soon as they leave the jaw, 
and the lower curl upward beside them ; and the latter are kept 
as sharp as knives by grinding against the upper pair. The 
lower tusks may measure ten inches in curved length, but two 
thirds of this is rooted within the jaw. Such an animal must 
Pig stick- always have been an object to tempt the prowess of 
in s- adventurous sportsmen, and legend does not go 

back far enough to tell of the beginning of boar hunting with 
big dogs. In England, 109 and on the continent of Europe, 
the custom has always been to follow the hounds afoot spear 
in hand; and when the dogs — predecessors of our " great 
Danes" — brought the animal to bay, to kill it by a javelin 

348 




AFRICAN WART HOG 

thrust. In Ceylon, Baker daringly did the same thing with 
onlv a strong knife as his weapon. The ordinary method in 
India, however, is by chasing on horseback ; a lot of men armed 
with long-handled spears going to the boar's haunts, and then 
setting a company of native beaters to drive piggy into the open, 
where the hunters ride at him pellmell and try to strike in a 
spear. "Pig stick- 
ing" is justly re- 
garded as the most 
exciting of the 
whole list of East- 
ern field sports, and 
is not without its 

dangers, for with V*- V 

an upward toss of 

his angry head he HEAD OF WART HoG ' 

may inflict terrible gashes on horse or man. 158 In addition to the 
large part this bold and peculiarly British sport fills in all books 
on East Indian outdoor life, a special volume has been devoted 
to it alone. 

The remainder of the list of the swine family need not 
Ions: detain us. The wart hog is an African form 

i i i • n r i Wart Hog. 

notable chiefly for its grotesque countenance and 
peculiarities of dentition, which indicate that it has had a long- 
independent fine of ancestry. 



"This animal," writes Baker, "is superlatively ugly: the head is dis- 
pro portioned to the size of the hog; the tusks are so enormous that they 
appear as though they had belonged to some such larger creature, and had 
merely been assumed as masquerade; there are two prominent protuber- 
ances upon either side of the eyes, also two pendulous warts of large and 
hideous growth; and when this ugly monster becomes excited, it cocks a 
long thin tail, with bristles upon either side, like that of an elephant. This 
appendage is carried straight in the air, as stiff as a stick, which gives the 
animal a ridiculous appearance." 

349 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Another elaborately armed form is the babirussa, or "deer 

hog," a big, bluish, almost hairless hog of the wet jungles 

of Celebes and Boru islands, whose tusks grow to 

Babirussa. 

an enormous length, sometimes a foot or more 
outside the mouth. 'This is due to the fact that they do not 
strike against one another, for the upper pair grow right up 

through the upper lip, and grow 
continuously, unchecked by the 
wear of any use, till they strike 
the forehead and curl down 
again. It, like the wart hog, is 
aside from the typical line of 
swine ; but it makes good pork, 
and is an object of local sport. 




The Babirussa. 



In the hippopotamus we have 
a member of the swine group 
very interesting to the zoologist, as one of those curious survi- 
vals of an ancient type alongside rapidly progressive relatives. 
It is, indeed,' as Schmidt 244 points out, the only liv- 
ing representative of the hoofed animals with tuber- 
culate teeth which has preserved the old structure of the limbs 
pretty well unchanged. 



Hippopota 

mus. 



"The early Tertiary ancestors of the ruminants," he remarks, "had to 
dwell principally in waters and on marshy ground. Their descendants 
adapted themselves gradually to life on dry ground, and this is connected 
with the advantageous reduction of the toes. The hippopotamus family 
has taken an opposite course; from being an animal that liked the marshy 
soil of the primeval forests it has become an aquatic creature, and accord- 
ingly has preserved the completeness of hand and foot, the four toes almost 
fully developed. ... If by some extravagant flight of the imagination we 
could conceive the existence of a one-toed leviathan, the very fact of its 
possessing a one-toed foot would be the cause of its speedy extinction. As 
regards dentition also, the hippopotamus shows signs of being geologically 
very old." 

35o 




35i 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The hippos, then, are a decadent race. Their origin is un- 
known, but the Lower Pliocene formations of India contain 
fossil species, and one existed there until after the advent of 
Stone-age man. In the warm Preglacial period, Europe was 
the home of the present African form, 60 ' 83 and until recently 
Madagascar had a dwarf species; a still smaller existing one 
little known is the Liberian variety, only six feet long. 

The range of the hippopotamus has been greatly reduced 
by the spread of civilization in Africa. Buffon gives an account 
of its capture in the delta of the Nile in classic times; and 
De Windt says they were to be seen at Damietta in 1109 a.d., 
while Burckhardt mentions seeing them at Dongola in 181 9. 
At that date they abounded in all the rivers of South Africa, 
but now hippos are to be got only from the rivers of the Congo 
basin, in those which feed the lower Zambezi, and at the sources 
of the upper course of the Nile. 



Horses, Tapirs, and Rhinoceroses 

(The Odd-toed Ungulates — Suborder Peris sodactyla) 

We now come to the horses, tapirs, rhinoceroses, and their ex- 
tinct relatives which constitute the solid-hoofed Perissodactyla. 
The most advanced, specialized, "highest" type of this sub- 
order is presented by the horses; and thanks to the fortunate 
preservation of their remains, and to the sagacity and industry 
of American paleontologists, we are able to trace and under- 
stand the history of their development with gratifying complete- 
ness. While some early forms were exhumed and described in 
France by Cuvier, early in the nineteenth century, it was not 
until Marsh, Leidy, Cope, Wortman and others, began to 
explore the Tertiary strata of our western plains, between 
i860 and 1880, that anything like a historical series connecting 
the ancestral forms with modern ones began to appear; and it 

35 2 



ANCESTRY OF HORSES 

was from the plentiful fossils collected by Marsh that Huxley, 
in 1876, 243 made that philosophic arrangement of the facts 
which presented so convincing a proof of the truth of the 
development theory, then new and comparatively unsupported. 
Latterly the work of the earlier men has been carried forward 
by Professor Henry F. Osborn and his assistants, prominently 
Drs. Wortman and Matthew ; and it is due to them that we are 
now so completely informed as to all the details of the develop- 
ment of the group. Dr. W. D. Matthew, especially, has done 
much to popularize as well as to originate knowledge on this 
subject, and it is from his writings that the following condensed 
statement is mainly derived : — 

Among the Cretaceous condylarths (see page 231) there is 
believed to have existed a small creature, the progenitor of the 
equine line. None such has yet actually been dis- pri iti 

covered in the rocks; but the Lower Eocene clay Progeni- 

. . tors - 

near London — the basic layer of the geological 

series assigned to the Age of Mammals — has yielded a pro- 
equine skull (Hyracotherium) which might have had such feet, 
judging by the structure of the known remains. About the same 
time, possibly three million years ago, there dwelt in the eastern 
foothills of the Rocky Mountains little animals undoubtedly 
of the horse family, known as Eohippus, whose fore feet had 
four complete toes and the " splint" of a fifth; the hind feet 
three toes and the splint of another. A little later (Middle 
Eocene) the rocks yield two other forms (Protorohippus and 
Orohippus)from which the splints of Eohippus have disappeared, 
and the middle toe is somewhat larger than the others — a 
feature still more manifest in the Upper Eocene skeletons 
termed Epihippus. At this time Europe had a number of 
related but not ancestral forms which presently died out ; while 
the true line of horse genealogy was continued in America by 
the Mesohippus of the Oligocene, which was as large as a 
sheep and had only three toes on each foot (the fifth digit now 
2 A 353 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



remaining only as a splint) and the middle toe so prominent 
that the hinder toes did not touch the ground, as in the case 
of the " false hoofs" of deer or cattle. The toes disappear 
as they are least used, so that the thumb would be the first to 







Evolution of the Single-toed Equine Foot. 

Diagram (after Osborn) illustrating by means of the human hand the process of gradual 
loss of side toes by concentration of weight and service upon the middle digit. 

go, as Osborn showed the reader could illustrate for himself 
by placing his fingers in a footlike position. 

"We may imagine," writes Osborn, "the earliest herds of 
horses in the Lower Eocene (Eohippus) as resembling a lot 
Ancestry of °^ sma ^ f ox terriers in size, . . . covered with short 
Horse. \^ YX w hich may have had a brownish color with 

lighter spots, resembling the sunbeams falling through the leaves 
of trees, and thus protecting the little animals from observation. " 

Mesohippus was succeeded in the Miocene by Parahippus, 
and also by Protohippus in the Upper Miocene, the latter of 
which was somewhat larger, showed an increasing centraliza- 
tion of weight on the middle toe, and had teeth a little more 
advanced toward the modern pattern from the early short and 
tubercle-crowned type. At this date, also, several other forms 
existed both in Europe and in North America, which proved 
to be aside from the direct line of evolution, and whose races 
soon died out. Among them was the American "forest horse" 
(Hypohippus), described by Osborn as ten hands high, with 
large lateral toes serving to keep the feet from sinking into the 
relatively soft ground of the warm forest sand lowlands of its 
day, where it sought the softer kinds of herbaceous food for 

354 



MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE HORSES 

which its short simple teeth sufficed. This horse lived under 
the favorable conditions of the Upper Miocene period, when 
this country had an almost tropical climate, vegetation was 
luxuriant, and the continent teemed with fine animals, great 
and small, as did Africa and India a century ago. 

With it lived the "deer horse" (Neohipparion), which was 
"proportioned like the Virginia deer, — delicate and extremely 



U'mMi m* Lam 






• m 


|f^fe^|| ^$|P 


. 


^S \ 



By permission of the American Museum of Natural History. 

Eocene Four-toed Horse (Protorohippus). 
Restoration by Charles R. Knight, under direction of Professor H. F. Osborn. 



fleet-footed, surpassing the most highly bred modern race horse 
in its speed mechanism." Nevertheless both races became 
extinct and left no visible progeny. Protohippus was succeeded 
in the Pliocene by Pliohippus, about the size of a Shetland 
pony, in which the side toes no longer come near the ground; 
and this is confidently regarded as the lineal American ancestor 
of the modern horse, though the fossil connection is not yet 
complete. These Miocene and Pliocene horses were probably 
striped, like zebras, while the earlier, forest- running sorts were 

355 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

spotted; and the preglacial horses which followed them were 
probably a uniform reddish brown — an effect of the cold, 
rainy climate of the Pleistocene period, to which, perhaps, 
are also due the addition of a heavy mane and tail, useful as 
blanket and fly brush, and the broadening of the hoofs, adapted 
to walking on softer ground. 

Along with the disappearance of the side toes in the evolution of the 
horse goes a considerable increase in the proportionate length of the limbs. 
Evolution Greater length in the lower leg and foot enlarges the length 
of Horse. of the stride without decreasing its quickness and, therefore, 
gives the animal greater speed; but it puts an increased strain on the ankles 
and toe joints, and these must be strengthened correspondingly by con- 
verting them from ball-and-socket joints to pulley joints. Additional 
strength is obtained by the consolidation of the two bones of the forearm 
and of the leg into one. The concentration of the step on a single firmly 
shod toe serves likewise to increase the speed over smooth ground, although 
a hindrance to travel in rough or boggy places. The increase in length of 
limb renders it necessary for the grazing animal that the head and neck 
should lengthen, in order to enable the mouth to reach the ground; and com- 
parison of modern with early types shows that all these changes have gone 
on as fast as required. With them has proceeded a constant lengthening 
of teeth and improvement of them as grinders, until now they are capable 
of the thorough mastication of the flinty grasses of the dry uplands upon 
which few other animals can subsist. The general enhancement in size 
shows the effect of abundant food and increasingly favorable conditions 
as time went on. All these changes are adaptations to a life in a region of 
level, open, grassy plains. At first the race was better fitted for a forest life, 
but it has become more and more completely adapted to compete with ene- 
mies or rivals under the conditions which prevail in the high dry plains of 
the interior of the great continents. This evolution went on as gradually 
as the evolution of the plains themselves. Says Matthew : — 

"At the commencement of the Age of Mammals the western part of 
the North American continent was by no means as high above sea level as 
now. Great parts of it had but recently emerged, and the Gulf of Mexico 
Tertiary st ^ stretched far up the valley of the Mississippi. The cli- 

America. mate at that time was probably very moist, warm, and tropical, 
as is shown by the tropical forest trees, found fossil even as far as Green- 
land. Such a climate, with the low elevation of the land, would favor the 

356 



IN FLU EX CE OF CONDITIONS 

growth of dense forests all over the country, and to such conditions of life 
the animals of the beginning of the mammalian period must have been 
adapted. During the Tertiary the continent was steadily rising above the 
ocean level, and at the same time other influences were at work to make 
the climate continually colder and drier. The coming on of a cold, dry 
climate restricted and thinned the forests and caused the appearance and 
extension of open, grassy plains. The ancient forest inhabitants were 
forced either to retreat and disappear with the forests, or to adapt themselves 
to the new conditions of life. The ancestors of the horse, following the latter 




A Race Horse: Extreme of Modern Development of the Equine Tvpe. 

course, changed with the changing conditions, and the race became finally 
as we see it to-day, — one of the most highly specialized of animals in its adap- 
tation to its peculiar environment. At the end of the Age of Mammals 
the continents stood at a higher elevation than at present, and there was a 
broad land connection between Asia and North America, as well as those 
now existing. At this time the horse became cosmopolitan, and inhabited 
the plains of all the great continents, excepting Australia." 

"About the early or mid-Pliocene period," Osborn informs us, "there 
apparently occurred the long journey of the true American breed of horses 

into Asia and Europe, and over the newly made land bridge „. 

. _, . , .„ . ' Migration 

of Panama or of the Antilles into South America. That the of Primi- 

true Old World horse actually came from America is inferred tive Horses - 
because of the sudden appearance in the Upper Pliocene of the Siwalik Hills 
of northern India, in northern Italy, and in England, of five species of the 
true horses (Equus), of which no ancestors have been found in either Eu- 
rope or Asia. Another strong argument for their American origin is found 

357 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

in the simultaneous appearance in the same countries of the camel, which 
we positively know to have been an exclusively American-bred animal." 

Whether or not enough remained to continue here the develop- 
ing race, at any rate America had many horses in Pleistocene or 
Preglacial times. In this era the northern hemisphere, af- 
fected by the advancing glacial cold, was continually becoming 
cooler and more rainy, yet the climate seems to have been, at 
least in the earlier part, highly favorable for horses, since a 
larger number of species, bigger than ever before, ranged over 
the plains and through the woods. One species about the size 
of a western bronco was numerous all over the South Atlantic 
states; a larger one inhabited the northwestern and middle 
states; while on the Pacific coast might have been seen a big 
one, the closest of all to the existing type. 

"Like the early cave horses of Europe, it had a large head, convex fore- 
head, stout limbs, spreading hoofs, and splint bones, which represent the 
last of the lateral toes." Finally, there are found in Texas the skulls of a 
gigantic nag whose teeth indicate a bulk a third greater than that of a Bel- 
gian Percheron ; while from Mexico has been obtained, on the other hand, 
the smallest species known. 

It is certain that South America was supplied with horses 
from the northern continent, and that there the stock, under 
the influence of novel conditions, gave rise to several species, 
some of which survived until after the advent of man, for their 
relics show that in Pleistocene times they were hunted and eaten 
by the savages of the period when glacial ice buried the major 
part of North America. This arctic condition in the North is 
reasonably supposed to have put an end to the horses, as well 
as many other animals then living here; but no such climatic 
disaster overwhelmed South America, where the favorable 
conditions remained unchanged, and where, when horses were 
reintroduced by the Spanish colonists, they ran wild, multiplied 
and flourished amazingly, especially on the pampas. No ade- 
quate explanation of their previous disappearance has been made. 

358 



PREHISTORIC USE OF HORSES 



As to the origin of our tamed horses the most authoritative 
and succinct conclusions of science are expressed Origin of 
in the ensuing paragraphs from Professor Osborn's Horses. 
book. 247 

"The conquest of the horse by man marked one of the great turning 
points in the history of civilization. ... In the Interglacial or Postglacial 
period the remains of man and the horse are first found together. The 
first association occurs in the middle of the Paleolithic or rough-implement 
period. The discovery 
of all the possible uses 
of the horse came very 
gradually, for there is 
abundant proof that 
man first hunted and 
ate, then drove, and 
finally rode the animal. 
The remarkable draw- 
ings discovered by Ri- 
viere in 1901 in the 
cave of La Mouthe are 
believed to be of Paleo- 
lithic age. The artists 
of La Mouthe and other 
caves in France left out- 
lines partly etched, partly in ocher, of the animals of the chase, the reindeer, 
mammoth, bison, ibex, and horse, which have, for our purpose, the extreme 
merit of telling the truth. There are varieties in these drawings which 
Ewart interprets as indicating a variety of races. 

"The prevailing drawings of the Paleolithic horse represent him as 
hog-maned, with no forelock to conceal the low-bred Roman nose. . . . 
Besides these Roman-nosed types, to which Ewart traces the modern cart 
horse, there are others with small heads and flat noses, which Ewart asso- 
ciates with the Celtic pony, and possibly with the origin of the thoroughbred. 
Other cave drawings, reproduced by M. Capitan, leave little doubt that 
the ass was known in Europe. It is also certain from abundant evi- 
dence in the caves of France that there was a larger horse toward the 
south perhaps, while the smaller breeds may have frequented the cold 
northern regions. The horse was at first simply hunted for food, and in 
the Solutrian period became the chief article of food, as shown by piled-up 

359 




Paleolithic Drawings of Horses. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



remains of thousands of skeletons, the long bones of which were split 
open for the marrow. 

"The northern Paleolithic horse was only ten hands high, probably as 
a result of the dwarfing effects of the severe climate. It was too small an 
animal to be ridden. It was certainly not very different in appearance 
from the only true wild horse which now survives in the world, and was 




Copy light, INT. Y. Zool. Society. 



Photographs of a pair living in the New 
York Zoological Park in 1905 ; the 
upper figures in their summer coat, the 
lower one in winter coat. 

possibly the same stock. This is 
Przewalsky's horse, of the desert of 
Dzungaria, which was discovered by 
Poliakoff in 1881, and demonstrated 
beyond a doubt to be distinct from the wild ass of northern Asia and the Mon- 
golian pony. As in the Paleolithic drawings this horse is unstriped. It is 
covered with thick hair of a dull brown or dun color, and has a woolly under 
covering for winter protection. One of the Przewalsky colts, now in the New 
York Zoological Park, probably gives us a living picture of the horse as 
he was known to Paleolithic man 30,000 years ago." 

360 



DERIVATION OF MODERN HORSES 

The interesting question arises : Are these Paleolithic horses, 
and possibly the Przewalsky horses, the forbears of our modern 
domesticated breeds ; and are our horses of single origin, or of 
multiple origin, like our dogs? 

Professor Osborn answers this by the statement that Ewart 
has lately discovered in the Faroes and outer Hebrides a small, 
yellow dun pony, partly striped, with short hairs on the upper 
part of the tail, prominent eyes, small ears, and sometimes 
very small callosities on the inside of the hocks. Especially 
distinctive is the small, graceful head of this Celtic pony, which 
leads Ewart to compare it with the small-sized, small-headed 
horse of Paleolithic man. Ewart also observed, as a second 
type, large yellow duns, about fourteen and three tenths hands 
at the withers, with big bones, large heads, and ungraceful 
Roman noses. " I imagine," he writes, "that the ancestors of 
these animals came from the south of Europe and correspond 
with the larger horses of the Neolithic cave-deposits." From 
this second coarse, thick-set breed, similar in size to a full-grown 
Przewalsky' s horse, and to the animals which were domesti- 
cated in the Neolithic or polished- stone age of Europe, the 
common type of European work horse may have sprung. 

So near to the horses as not to be separable as another genus 
are the South African zebras, which differ mainly in their 
brighter coloring, less bushy tail, stiff, "roached" 
mane, and lack of the callosities called "chestnuts" 
on the hind legs. So recently have the three branches of the 
Equidae diverged that all will interbreed, though the progeny 
(mules) of every sort of crossing are sterile. Interesting but 
not very conclusive results have been obtained by elaborate 
experiments in this interbreeding, specially with zebras. 

Existing zebras are of two types, — a southern and a northern. 
The "true" zebra, now left to us only in a few captive speci- 
mens, but once numerous on the wooded mountains near the 

361 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Cape of Good Hope, is the smallest of all (twelve to twelve and 
a half hands high) and everywhere striped with black on a white 
ground, the black stripes of moderate width, yet wider than the 
white spaces. This species was never seen far from the moun- 
tains. On the plains, as well as among the hills of all the more 
open parts of Africa from Orange River to Lake Rudolph, roamed 



frnhnSt^ * 



lii^^ 




BURCHELL'S (OR SOUTHERN) ZEBRA. 

Burchell's or the plains variety of this zebra, the one now com- 
monly seen in menageries. It presents many local variations, 
but in all the coat is creamy or golden yellow, and the black 
stripes are far broader than in the mountain zebra, which it also 
exceeds in size; its ears are smaller and its mane fuller. This 
kind, which represents the southern type, is partial to sparsely 
forested country, but is, or was, to be found everywhere from 
the seacoast to the summits of the rocky interior plateaus. 269 

Closely related to these was a third animal, extinct since about 
1875, which a century ago wandered in vast herds on the open 
treeless veldt south of the Vaal River and west of the arid 

362 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE QUAG G A 

Kalahari country. This was the quagga. It was darker than the 
others, — "a dark rufous brown on the neck and upper parts of 
the body, becoming lighter on the sides, and fading 
off to whitish beneath and behind ; instead of being 
striped, too, over the whole body, it was only strongly banded 
on the head and neck, the dark brown stripes becoming fainter 
on the shoulders and dying away in spots and blotches." Its 
name was borrowed from the Hottentots, and when properly 
pronounced, sounds closely imitative of its "barking neigh," 
qua-ha; and BurchelFs ze- 
bras are to-day called "qua- 
has" by the colonists, — a 
fact which leads to confusion 
in some books. The plain 
coloration toward which it 
was tending seems respon- 
sive to the influences of the 
dry open country in which 
it lived, — influences also af- 
fecting the BurchelPs zebras 

of the south to make them 

r , . . . , Grevv's (or Northern) Zebra. 

far paler than those of the 

rougher and more wooded region northward. The French 
paleontologist Gaudry places the quagga nearest of all living 
Equidae to the Hipparion, — a graceful equine which in Plio- 
cene times wandered in great herds over the plains of Thes- 
saly, and whose skeletons are entombed by thousands in the 
marvelous bone deposits at Pikermi near Athens, Greece. 

The northern type of zebra (Grevy's) is also "extravagantly 
striped," but after a very different pattern, for the deep-black 
stripes are much narrower and more numerous, the white being 
mere streaks; it is also the largest of its race, fourteen to 
fifteen hands high, and the bigness of its head and hairy ears 
is noticeable. Its home is the hilly, ravine-cut plateaus of 

363 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Somaliland and southward to the Mt. Kenia range, — a coun- 
try arid and open or thinly wooded. Two or three allied species 
or varieties are designated in the books. 

The gaudy striping of these animals has caused much specu- 
lation. Professor Osborn is of the opinion that it is a trait 
Coiora- acquired comparatively recently, under the brilliant 
sunshine-and-shadow conditions of Africa, where the 
zebras have taken an opposite course of development in this re- 
spect from the horses and asses. The whole family, he believes, 
has inherited a tendency toward stripings from American Mio- 
cene ancestors for which transversely striped hides were useful, 
by making them less conspicuous in the partly forested kind of 
country which then probably prevailed. Wild ponies and asses 
yet show traces of such markings as occasionally do domestic 
colts ; for example, the striped duns of the southwestern United 
States. But while in the .plains-dwelling horses and asses the 
stripings have practically disappeared, in the zebras they have 
become intensified, because, as he says, these animals have kept 
themselves mainly in situations where, sparse trees cast shadows. 
The hunters do not say much about it, apparently never having 
noticed more difficulty in getting a good sight of a zebra than 
of any other game ; but some scientific travelers have asserted 
that the vividly contrasted colorings of the zebras are really pro- 
tective. Schillings 269 does so, and Dr. J. W. Gregory, in his 
fine book, "The Great Rift Valley," writes as follows: — 

"The ornamentation of the zebra was also a puzzle to me till I saw them 
at home. The ordinary explanation of striped animals, such as the tiger, 
is that stripes resemble bands of light seen through tall grasses and jungle. 
But this is not applicable to the zebra, which lives in open plains. Watch 
the zebra on these, however, and the value of the coloration is apparent. 
At a distance of from 250 to 300 yards the stripes of the East African 
species (Equus boehmi, similar to E. greyvi) cease to be visible and 
the animal appears of a dull gray color. ... In dull, cloudy weather, and 
especially at dawn and sunset, which are the most dangerous times for game, 
the zebra is practically invisible at a distance of over five hundred yards. 

364 



A PUZZLIXG COLOR THEORY 

In bright sunshine, in the middle of the day, I have seen a herd of them at a 
distance of over three miles; but that is not the time when their enemies 
prey upon them." 

A German writer, Von Hohnel, who accompanied Count 
Teleku on his explorations east of Lake Rudolph, has recorded 
some almost contradictory observations : — 

"In the afternoon, I, for a long time, with the help of my field glasses, 
watched a little herd of animals which from their size and color I took to 
be wild asses. As we had not met with any before, I was at some pains 
to get near enough to examine them carefully, but in the end I found they 
were only Zebra grevyi with narrow stripes. Seen with the naked eye at 
the distance of some 300 paces they appeared to be a uniform gray color." 
He notes making a similar mistake a second time. Von Hohnel also 
mentions that the noise made by a Grevy's zebra when alarmed or ex- 
cited is so very like that of a leopard or lion "that we were more than 
once deceived by it." Was this also "protective"? 

This does not agree very well with Osborn's "protective" ex- 
planation, for these examples were away from shadow; nor does 
Gregory's testimony seem very convincing, since in the dusk no 
animal, however tinted, is readily discernible; and no proof is 
offered that a uniformly gray or dust- colored zebra would not 
have been even less distinct at the distance mentioned. In fact, 
Von Hohnel's evidence goes to show that in the glare of sunlit 
plains a comparatively short distance makes all colors and pat- 
terns look alike, so that the Quaker-dressed ass is no better off 
than his gaudy cousin; and if he had not been an ass he 
would have stuck to the traditions of his gay ancestors ! But 
Gregory asserts that in full daylight he could recognize zebras 
three miles away. Lastly, what would it profit a zebra to be 
mistaken for anything else, anyhow? 

We come now to the third branch of the family, the asses, 
which, like the zebras, lack the hinder chestnuts and the well- 
haired manes and tails of the horses; but thev have 

Asses 

a horselike plainness of coat, and special peculiar- 
ities in the excessive bigness of the ears and in the smallness 

365 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



and compactness of the hoofs, indicating a long career on hard, 
stony ground — they are a desert race. Tegetmeier 245 asserts 
that they are peculiar in carrying the foals twelve months 
instead of eleven, as do horses and zebras. 

The wild asses are much alike, and are now regarded by Blan- 
ford and other special students as divisible into only two species, 
— one Asiatic and the other African. The Asiatic species stands 




Asiatic Wild Ass or Kiang. 

eleven to twelve hands high, has moderately sized ears and a 
rather long, well-haired tail, and the general hue is reddish, 
with a darker stripe along the spine, but none on the withers. 
The African asses are larger (fourteen hands high), have much 
larger ears, shorter mane, and the tail scantily haired. The gen- 
eral hue is gray, with no reddish tinge, and the muzzle, a throat 
patch, and the belly are white; and a dark stripe runs along 
the spine and down each of the withers. Both species show ob- 
scure dark bars upon the legs, but all the colorings and mark- 
ings are variable in amount and form. 

366 



THE WILD ASSES 

Of the Asiatic wild ass there appear to be three well-marked varieties, 
whose many local names have created no little confusion. The largest is 
the kiang, koulan, or dziggettai of Tibet and Mongolia, which is dark 
reddish in color, with a narrow black stripe from (and including) the mane 
along the spine to the top of the tail ; it inhabits central-Asian mountains 
up to the snow line, and has in winter a special furry and whitish coat. 
The second is the ghorkhar or onager, frequenting the plains of north- 
western India, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan, which is smaller and paler, 
sometimes silvery white, and has a comparatively broad dorsal stripe. 
The third variety, less well marked, is that of Persia and Syria, and is the 
one known to the writers of the Old Testament, who use it as a type of wild- 
ness and freedom (Job xxxix. 6, 7, 8). 

The African ass ranges throughout the open regions of northeastern 
Africa, from Somaliland to the Red Sea, and westward throughout the 
desert, where its food and habits are much like those of the ghorkhar, ex- 
cept that its small troops do not congregate into herds and all show an aver- 
sion to entering water, preferring to roll in the dust ; the Somaliland variety is 
paler, and has excited much interest among sportsmen. Baker de- 
clared of the wild ass of the Nubian deserts: "The animal in its native 
desert is the perfection of activity and courage; there is a high-bred tone 
in the deportment, a high-actioned step when it trots freely over the rocks 
and sand with the speed of a horse. When it gallops freely over the bound- 
less desert, no animal is more difficult to approach ; and although they are 
frequently captured by the Arabs, those taken are invariably the foals, 
which are run down by the fast dromedaries, while the mothers escape." 

The habits of all these animals — asses, zebras, and horses 
— are much alike in the wilderness, for all now live in substan- 
tially the same circumstances. They go about in small bands, 
each dominated by a powerful stallion, which sometimes as- 
semble in great herds, and seem most at home on lofty, dry 
plateaus. Their speed is great, so that they are able to travel 
long distances between their pastures and the watering places 
which must be visited at least once a day — usually after dark. 
In Africa the presence of zebras is regarded by travelers as a 
sure indication that water is not far distant. 

"The Asiatic wild ass," Lydekker informs us, "is remarkable for its 
fleetness and its capacity for getting over rough and stony ground at a great 

367 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

pace. . . . The food of these wild asses consists in the lowlands of differ- 
ent kinds of grasses, which are frequently dry; but in Thibet it is chiefly 
composed of various woody plants, which form the main vegetation of these 
arid regions. In the hills to the west of the Indus these animals are to be 
found wandering pretty well throughout the year; but in the early summer, 
when the grass and the water in the pools have dried up from the hot winds, 
the greater number, if not all, of the ghorkhars migrate to the hills for grass 



Nubian Wild Ass. 

and water. It is stated that in western India and Persia the wild asses are 
very shy and difficult to approach. This is, however, by no means the 
case with the kiang of western Thibet, which is one of the most curious 
and inquisitive of all animals, frequently approaching within fifty yards 
or less of any strange object. Indeed, these asses are often a positive nui- 
sance to the sportsman, as they will come to him as he is engaged in a stalk, 
and thus alarm and drive away his quarry. In Ladak I have frequently 
ridden among a herd of kiangs who would gallop close around my pony in 
circles ; and on one occasion a kiang, apparently actuated by extreme curios- 
ity, walked straight into the middle of my camp, where the cooking was going 

368 



UTILIZING THE ZEBRAS 

on, much to the alarm of the Indian servants. The speed of the ghorkhar 
is so great that it appears to be impossible for a single horseman to ride 
down an adult in good condition." 

The zebras of South Africa show precisely similar traits, in 
regions where not much molested often trotting close to a cara- 
van until they get a scent of human beings, when they whirl 
and dash away in fright. Just such behavior is seen in the 
"wild" horses of Turkestan, Patagonia, and our southwestern 
plains. Their principal enemies in Asia are wolves, and in 
Africa and America the great cats, zebras forming at present 
the principal prey of the East African lions and leopards. Ze- 
bras are usually in fine, fat condition and no game flesh is better 
liked by the average African. Selous notes that it is dark yel- 
low in color, and too rich to suit the stomach of a European, 
but if fried with bacon is not unpalatable. The early extinc- 
tion of those of the South was mainly due to the Boers slaugh- 
tering them as food for their negro slaves. 

The zebra has not yet furnished us with a domestic race of 
any particular value, in spite of occasional successes in rearing 
them and training them to harness." Hybrids between them 
and the mare are hardy and less vicious, and something valu- 
able may yet be made of them. Much the same is true of the 
Asiatic ass. Its foals are frequently captured by stratagem, 
and are easily reared; but it seems to require exceptional wis- 
dom and care to make them safe and tractable, or of any use 
in harness. Their flesh is not liked when anything else can be 
had, but the Persians and Afghans find it great sport to chase 
them with greyhounds. 

From the African wild ass, however, we have derived the 
donkey, — one of the most valuable of our four-footed servants. 
It has been varied far less than the horse from the 

Oonkcv 

original type, although it is perhaps older as a do- 
mestic animal. It was an abused and enduring slave of the 
farmer and peddler in Egypt long before the horse became known 

2B 369 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

there; but white asses have always been regarded in the East 
as animals suitable for the great to ride upon (Judges iv. 10), 
and are still held in honor. From the Orient they have been 
scattered widely, but do serious service only in the warmer parts 
of the Old World, or under the similar conditions in Mexico. 
Excepting some differences in size, donkeys everywhere are 
practically the same. In part, as Shaler remarks, this lack of 
change may be due to neglect by unprogressive owners; but 
Shaler 225 tells us that in Spain, where a long- continued effort 
has been made to develop the animal for interbreeding with 
the horse, the result shows that the form is relatively inelastic. 

" So long as pack animals were in general use, ... the qualities of 
the donkey have proved, and are still found, of value. The animal 
can carry a relatively heavy burden, being in such tasks, for its weight, 
more efficient than the horse. It is less liable to stampedes. It learns a 
round of duty much more effectively than that creature, and can subsist 
by browsing on coarse herbage, where a horse would become so far weak- 
ened as to become useless. ... In general, we may say that the 
donkeys belong to a vanishing state of human culture, to the time before 
carriage ways existed. Now that civilization goes on wheels, they seem 
likely to have an ever decreasing value." 

While the evolution of the horse was proceeding in North 
America, another group of perissodactyls, from an apparently 
quite independent origin, the Litoptema, evolved in 
South America a race adapted to the pampas, and 
singularly like the horse in many ways. These animals likewise 
lost the lateral toes one after another, and concentrated the step 
on the central toe; changed the form of the joint surfaces; 
lengthened the limbs and the neck, and gradually increased in 
size. The teeth were long and complicated the pattern, but no 
cement formed on them, so that they were not so efficient grind- 
ers as those of horses. This group of animals, which illustrates 
the principle of "parallelism" or " convergence," became totally 
extinct in South America shortly before the migration thither of 

370 



LITOPTERNA AND PROTAPIRUS 

the true horses. The latest and most remarkable example is 
Macrauchenia, fossil parts of which were first brought by Dar- 
win from Patagonia. This animal must have looked somewhat 
like a camel, for its neck is very long and camel- like in its struc- 
ture. The feet are three-toed and built on the perissodactyl 
plan, yet with important differences ; but the most remarkable 
singularity is to be found in the structure of the skull, where the 
opening for the nostrils is an egg-shaped aperture in the fore- 
head, almost between the eyes ! Of course, this was covered 
with flesh, and the indications are that the external nostrils were 
at the end of a trunk, perhaps not very long. This macrauchene 
was evidently a dry- land animal, for its legs were long and slender, 
and its feet resembled those of hepparions, in one genus re- 
duced to a single large toe on each foot, as in the modern horse. 65 

The nearest living relatives of the horses and zebras, thun- 
dering across the windy desert the very image of bold and active 
liberty and grace, are the small, retiring, ungainly 

Tapirs. 

tapirs, hiding in the swampy forests of the Tropics. 
In this startling contrast our imagination is thrown back to the 
steaming jungles of Tertiary times, when the forerunners of 
the perissodactyls could hardly be distinguished by such terms 
as now name their branches. 60 Back to those Eocene days may 
be traced the family of the tapirs until it blends with the begin- 
nings of the lophiodons and palaeotheres (which presently died 
out), and of the more persistent Equidae. From that time to 
this, through Protapirus of the Lower Miocene of Wyoming, 
and other later genera, the descent of the family is traceable 
with the certainty, but not the detail, of its equine cousins ; and 
in all these ages it has hardly varied. Those of to-day exhibit 
little advance in structure of feet or teeth over their remote an- 
cestors ; and in our tapirs we still have a fair copy of the early 
perissodactyls. Primitively, the pro-tapirs were scattered all 
over the world; but as the later Tertiary conditions slowly 

37i 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



changed from torrid to temperate outside the Tropics, this line 
of animals, instead of adaptively and locally changing with 
them, expired elsewhere than under the equator, where heat 
and moisture still reigned. There they continued to live and 
reproduce their kind until now. Hence it is no longer difficult 
to understand why both South America and 
Malaya have representatives of the family, 
or why the species are many, though the 
numbers and range of each are limited. 

In structure, however, the tapir is nearer 
to the rhinoceros than to the horse, for the 
limbs are short and massive, and the feet 
have four toes in front (second, third, fourth, 
and fifth, the third largest), and three (sec- 
ond, third, and fourth) behind, each incased 
in a separate and proper hoof. The neck 
is short and thick, the skull short and high, 
yet the head looks long in life because of 
the swollen nose. The teeth are only forty- 
two, and are far less complicated and per- 
fected than are those of the horse, for the 
food is soft and requires little grinding. The 
hair is short and close, forming a little stiff 
mane on. the nape of the neck, but orna- 
menting no tail, since there is almost no such an appendage. 
The colors are dull, aiding in the concealment upon which 
the animal must mainly rely for safety ; and it is chiefly noc- 
turnal because defenseless. 

The Malay tapir, the only species in the Old World, is the 
largest of the family, standing nearly four feet tall at the rump, 
where the back is most elevated, 221 and is brown black, with a 
grayish blanket over the back behind the shoulders, and white 
ears. South and Central America contain four species, differing in 
structural features, but all uniform brownish black and of very 

372 




Tapir's Fore Foot. 
(Compare page 235.) 



TRAITS OF AMERICAN TAPIRS 

similar habits. A curious fact is, that two of them are more 
nearly allied to the Malayan tapir than to their neighbors. 
Young tapirs are spotted at first, as is the rule among forest- 
dwelling quadrupeds. Tapirs everywhere are solitary, shy, 
timid, and nocturnal. They have a hoglike fondness for water, 
and old Dampier gave us accurate information, as usual, when 
he wrote : 253 — 

"This Creature is always found in the Woods near some large River; 
and feeds on a sort of long thin Grass or Moss. . . . When her Belly is full, 
she lies down to sleep by the Brink of the River; and at the least Noise 
slips into the Water: when, sinking down to the Bottom, though very deep, 
she walks as on the dry Ground. She cannot run fast, therefore never ram- 
bles far from the River; for there she always takes Sanctuary in case of 
Danger." 

They are mainly browsers, for the nose and upper lip are 
prolonged into a fleshy proboscis precisely comparable with that 
of the elephant, by which they can easily seize and draw into the 
mouth the succulent leaves and shoots they enjoy. All sorts of 
plants seem acceptable, and where numerous they are likely to 
do much harm to the Indians' poorly fenced patches of garden 
or orchard. Tschudi says that this happens often in Peru. "A 
broad furrow marks the track along which they have passed, 
and the plants they encounter in their progress are trampled 
down or devoured. Such a visit [from a troop] is particularly 
fatal to the cocoa fields ; for the tapirs are extremely fond of 
the leaves of the low-growing cocoa plant, and they often in 
one night destroy a cocoa field which has cost a poor Indian 
the hard labor of a year." 

In Central America the tapir is everywhere known as "danta," 
and will be found in all dense forests, in Guatemala, at least, 
climbing high on the mountains, down which it will rush when 
pursued until it reaches water in which to stand at bay. This 
defensive trick is its means of escape from the jaguar, its fore- 
most enemy in America, as are the tiger and other big cats in 

373 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the Orient. Regular paths are made by these animals through 
the woods, a fact of which hunters and trappers take advantage, 
for in Costa Rica, particularly, the tapir is much hunted for the 
sake of its flesh, which is good for use fresh, and is extensively 
salted and dried by the backwoodsmen ; while the thick hide is 
a favorite material for twisted whips. 

Brazilian tapirs are often tamed, and are said to make amusing 
and affectionate pets. Shavings from the hoofs are regarded by 
the Orinoco Indians as very valuable in medicine; but sex 
must be carefully distinguished — no man must be dosed with 
the hoofs of any but a male tapir, and vice versa. 



Behemoth and his Horn 

The rhinoceros is another antique preserved to us as a relic 
of nature's early attempts to formulate a solid-hoofed type of 
quadruped. Its kind was once as widespread on both sides of 
the globe as were the tapirs, but proved immobile and suc- 
cumbed in most regions to unfavorable alterations in geography 
and climate. 

The family begins to be recognized in fossils toward the close of the 

Eocene, in both Europe and North America ; and the Miocene genera differ 

„ , . very little in their skeleton from the existing one. It is an 

Evolution. • . . , pi,./ , 

interesting circumstance that some of the earliest (amynodonts) 

seem to have been aquatic, and in form and habits much like our hippopota- 
muses ; while others, such as the hyracodonts, were agile, light-chested, rather 
long-necked and hornless, resembling a horse in build, and in the compact- 
ness of the hoofs indicating a plains-dwelling existence. These last were 
American. They were apparently defenseless, and soon disappeared ; and 
probably all that saved the more direct line of ancestors was the fortunate 
fact that in the Old World they gradually developed weapons of defense 
on the nose. It is true that Diceratherium, a small American form of 
Miocene Age, had nose horns, but they were weak and set side by side — 
an arrangement which here, as elsewhere, has proved ineffective ; the nose 
does not furnish a base strong enough for paired horns, which must be 
subjected to sidewise wrenches in use. 

374 



FORERIWWERS OF THE RHINOCEROS 



Two or three associated forms of huge middle-Tertiary mammals allied 
to the rhinoceros require mention. Prominent among them, and almost 
exclusively American so far as known, were the titanotheres, forming the 
family Titanotheriidae. These in their later development exceeded in size 
the largest modern rhino, reaching a length of thirteen feet and standing 
seven and a half feet tall at the shoulders; the probable appearance of 
Titanothcrium robustum is shown in the accompanying restoration. Its 
head was most remarkable, the skull having somewhat the shape of a 




By permission of the American Museum of Natural History. 

A TlTANOTHERIUM BULL, COW AND CALF. 
Restoration by Charles R. Knight, under direction of Professor H. F. Osborn. 

saddle, with two great horn -projections in front, and others above the 
little eyes. Some thirty species have been recovered, together with their 
Eocene predecessors, Palaeosyops and Telmatotherium, and one of the most 
interesting and valuable exhibits in the splendid paleontological collection 
of the Museum of Natural History in Xew York is Professor Osborn's 
series showing the gradual evolution of the peculiarities of these gigantic 
ungulates toward their perfected form, described by Osborn and Wortman 
in the Bulletins of the Museum for 1895 and 1896. The family seems to 
have reached the limit of its specialization and come to an end within the 

375 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




TlTANOTHERlUM ELATUM. 



Oligocene epoch (White River beds), since subsequent to that time no re- 
mains have been found, nor anything traceable to them. 

About the same time there existed in North Africa an extraordinary 
relative, discovered in 1899 by Mr. Hugh Beadnell in the Fayum basin, 

Upper Egypt, and named Arsin- 
oetherium, after Queen Ar- 
sinoe, the wife of the wise King 
Ptolemy Philadelphus (b.c. 308- 
247), who had a palace in what 
was then a fertile and populous 
region around Lake Moeris. 137 
An outline of its skull is given 
herewith. In bulk and appear- 
ance of body it must have re- 
sembled the titanotheres, or the 
huge ancient rhinoceroses (its skull alone measures three feet in length), 
and bore two great cores of hollow bones side by side, which in life were 
probably covered with 
sheaths of horn, besides 
another small pair behind 
them. The teeth and feet 
are very different in struc- 
ture from those of either a 
titanothere or a rhinoceros, 
the teeth (44) forming an 
unbroken series, wonder- 
fully graduated. This side 
branch also proved a fail- 
ure, dying out and leaving 
no descendants. 

No species of the typi- 
cal genus (Rhinoceros) has 
been found in American 
rocks; but in Europe and 
Asia true rhinoceroses were numerous from Miocene times until the 
general glaciation of the North closed the career of so many mammalian 
races outside of the Tropics. All the American fossil representatives of 
the family were two-horned, like the modern African exiles, while single- 
horned fossil species occur, as now, only in the Orient. A notable and 
interesting one is the huge and very long-horned woolly or tichorine 

376 




Skull of Arsinoetherium. 



RHINOCEROS HOOFS AND HORNS 



rhinoceros, which roamed over Pleistocene Europe and Asia, and whose 
frozen remains, clothed in reddish wool mixed with stiff hairs, and armed 
with great horns, are found with those of the mammoth in the ice cliffs of 
the Siberian coast. A Siberian contemporary (Elasmotherium) must have 
much resembled it. 

The world's present stock of rhinoceroses, then, are but 
widely scattered and varied remnants of past wealth. Two 
species are African and three East Indian, — the latter differ- 
ing from the former in having the skin thrown into great plate- 
like folds; in keeping the useful incisor teeth throughout life 
instead of losing them in 
infancy as do the African; 
and in having but one 
nose horn (except the 
Sondaic). In all kinds 
the feet are round and 
massive, with the short 
toes bound together and 
each incased in a hooflike 
nail; the central (third) toe is the largest, but a sole pad sus- 
tains the weight of the body. 

The nose horns are comparable to true horns only remotely, 
since they are simply outgrowths of the skin based upon a thick- 
ening of the nasal bones; and are composed of a „ 

° . ' \ Nose Horn. 

bundle of tapering whalebonelike fibers which sprout 

from papillae, like feathers, and are firmly cemented together, 

growing at the base as fast as they wear away at the tip. 









m^MMi^^^^ 



Elasmotherium. 



These horns are utilized by the Africans as handles for their knives 
and weapons, the longer ones being formed into clubs so highly valued 
that only chiefs possess them; and ever)' Boer hunter tries to own a clean- 
ing rod for his rifle whittled from this tough material. The horn of the 
Asiatic species, like almost everything else in the furniture of strange ani- 
mals, has been held until very recent years to have medicinal and other 
curious virtues, among them that it would keep sweet water in which it 
was laid, and that it would betray the presence of poison by falling to 

377 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

pieces. This latter notion has been world-wide, and is still believed by 
Sudanese Arabs, Chinese peasants, and similarly trustful and backward 
persons. The same opinion formerly prevailed in Europe in respect to 
ibex horns; and the consequent demand for them in the old turbulent 
days, as material for poison-detecting wine cups, did more than anything 
else to exterminate the ibex from the German and Italian Alps. The 
Chinese and Burmese still pay high prices for the horns, tongues, and other 
efficacious parts of the Eastern rhinoceros, to be ground into medicinal 
powders. 

The Indian rhinoceros is the largest of the Asiatic species, 
standing five and three-quarters feet high, and ten and one-half 
Oriental ^ eet l° n & 5 its single nose horn rarely exceeds one foot 
species. long, its skin is thick, hairless, and suggests a suit of 
plate armor. In life a knife blade or bullet will penetrate it 
easily enough, and it is sensitive to the slightest touch ; but when 




Indian Rhinocekos. 

taken off and properly dried it becomes a very suitable material 
for the shields with which Oriental soldiers used to be armed. 
It may be so prepared as to be translucent and mottled like 
tortoise-shell, and ornaments are made of it. Once a denizen 
of all northeastern India, this animal is now confined to the 

37S 



HAUNTS OF THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS 

Assam plain, where many a beast finds the refuge denied him 
elsewhere in India. 

"The trees there are festooned with orchids and ferns roped together 
with a tangle of creepers, open glades covered with grass and undergrowth 
are to be seen here and there, and sluggish streams, half hidden under the 
leafy canopy, linger among the feathery canes and lofty peepul trees. 
Empty watercourses, like long white snakes, run through the green forest, 
forming the highways of man and beast, and in the shining sand who looks 
may read that elephant and rhinoceros, buffalo and bison, with deer in 
numerous species, daily wander there seeking their food. I need hardly 
say that when my duty called me to such a district I resolved to leave no 
stone unturned to secure a rhino. Government provided me with elephants, 
without which neither work nor sport, nor, indeed, locomotion of any kind, 
can be carried on in this wondrous corner of the earth. Imagine to yourself 
a vast plain covered with a Brobdingagian growth of grass fifteen to twenty 
feet high, in which an elephant makes no more stir than does a rabbit in a 
corn field at home. In this jungle there are moist hollows overgrown with 
reeds, and dark green islands breaking the monotony of the tawny surface 
of the withered grass, or a few fire-charred skeletons of lofty trees rearing 
themselves above it all. Suddenly one comes on a half -dried ' wallow,' 
where you, or rather your elephant, must walk warily, for it is in such places 
that you may find your rhino, either lying or feeding, should the young grass 
have begun to sprout ; only you must be a very early bird to catch him, for 
when the sun arises he gets himself off to his forest, where he conceals him- 
self for the remainder of the day." 

Its habits, according to Kinloch 160 and others, are very sim- 
ple — merely feeding upon the leaves, shrub tw T igs, and grass 
around it, wallowing in mud, seeking now and then a mate or 
meeting a companion, and from time to time fighting a tiger or 
leopard. Sometimes a pair will travel far at night to feast upon 
a field of growing grain. Young ones are easily tamed, and 
this species has been kept in captivity in the East since prehis- 
toric days. Thence it was obtained by the managers of the 
Roman show houses for the gratification of their wonder-loving 
patrons; and after a dozen centuries a specimen was taken 
westward to amaze the people of western Europe, where it was 
first exhibited early in the sixteenth century. Nothing funnier 

379 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

can be found in the literature of natural history than the pic- 
tures, — except that by Dlirer, who knew how to draw animals, 
— descriptions, and speculations of that century upon this beast, 
which writers identified with a Behemoth, the Unicorn, and 
what not ? A sample of the cream of it may be found in old 
TopselPs book. 171 The animal lives well in confinement and 




Hairy-eared Variety of the Sumatran Rhinoceros. 

occasionally reproduces itself, — one little one at a birth is the 
rule of the whole family. 

The hunting of this rhinoceros is nowadays possible only by riding on 
an elephant, and the sport is usually tame. Its first effort is to get away, 
and it bolts, squealing and grunting with fright, but if wounded and stopped 
it will resist desperately, as will almost any other beast brought to a corner, 
and may charge open-mouthed, using its tushes like a boar and inflicting 
fearful cuts. Great scars show how severely the bulls punish each other 
in their jealous fights. 

Smaller and lighter gray in color, and with the folds of its 
armor less prominent and tuberculous, the lesser or Javan rhi- 
noceros has a much wider range, since it is found from Bengal 
eastward into Burma, and southward to Java and Borneo. It 
dwells mainly in the coastal forests, and feeds on leaves and 

380 



MALAYAN RHINOCEROSES 



twigs, bulbous roots grubbed out by its horn, and the like. 
Pollok 156 says that in Burma the swamps they frequent are 
quaking bogs and hence they are little molested. They are 
likely to come forth after dark to feed, and the natives some- 
times kill them by making an ambuscade at one of the places to 
which they regularly go to deposit their dung, — a curious habit 
of all rhinoceroses, and to some extent of wild perissodactyls 
generally, and even of the antelopes. 

Over the same country, except Java, is scattered the smallest 
of all living rhinoceroses, — the Sumatran or Sondaic species, 
which is singular in hav- 
ing two horns and a bristly 
coat of thin but long hair, 
forming decided fringes on 
the ears in some specimens. 
The skin is rough, granu- 
lar, and blackish. The 
Chinese demand for its 
horns has nearly extermi- 
nated this species near set- 
tlements, but in the interior 
it still is plentiful. 

Let us turn now to 
Africa. 

"Of the rhinoceroses," 
wrote Gordon Cumming in 
1845, "there are four varieties in South Africa, distinguished by 
the Bechuanas by the names of the borele, or black African 
rhinoceros ; the keitloa, or two-horned black rhinoce- s P eci es. 
ros ; the muchocho, or common white rhinoceros ; and the ko- 
baoba, or long-horned white rhinoceros." This was the general 
opinion until scientific examination showed that only two kinds 
were separable : the "black" or long- lipped, and the "white" or 
square-mouthed ; but there is really no difference in their color, 

381 




Head of Square-mouth. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

for both are bluish gray when clean. In both the skin lies 
smooth except about the bend of the neck, and is quite hairless ; 
and both have two horns in both sexes, — far longer ones than 
are ever worn by their more peaceful and swamp- dwelling Asi- 
atic cousins. The pair may be equal, but as a rule the front horn 
is decidedly longer. A horn of the common species measuring 
forty inches is considered long, while that of the square-mouthed 
sometimes reaches fifty inches; but such dimension records are 
glories of the past, for the square- mouthed is almost extinct, 
and the other species growing rare. 

A century ago the square-mouth was to be met with every- 
where in Africa south of the Zambezi, except in stony hills or on 
the waterless Kalahari Desert. It moved about in family par- 
ties and ate grass, pulling it off with the flattened lips and 
crushing it between the horny gums and big cheek teeth. 

" When either walking, trotting, or galloping," Selous tells us, "the white 
rhinoceros always carried its nose close to the ground. A calf always 
preceded its mother, and she appeared to guide it by holding the point of 
the horn on the little creature's rump ; and in all changes of pace, no matter 
how sudden, this position was always maintained. This rhinoceros was 
easily killed by a shot through the heart or through both lungs, but would 
travel very long distances, and, probably as a rule, ultimately recover from 
wounds in other parts of the body. ... In disposition they were sluggish 
and inoffensive animals, lying asleep in the shade of trees or bushes during 
the heat of the day, and coming to the water to drink at night, or often 
before sundown in parts of the country where they had not been much 
molested." 

The other species differs little in form or color, but markedly 
in the shape of the lips, which are prolonged, with the upper 
pointed and overhanging the other ; this upper lip is extensible, 
and may be curled around a bunch of twigs like a finger, thus 
grasping and tearing loose the food instead of biting it off. 
This apparatus suits the feeding habits of this rhinoceros, which 
never grazes, but subsists wholly by browsing on the leaves and 
twigs of the mimosa and other local bushes. When first known 

382 



POWER OF ONSLAUGHT 



it ranged throughout eastern Africa from Natal to Abyssinia, 
but kept away from the forested region west of the great lakes. 
It was everywhere fairly numerous, wandering about in family 
parties or singly, and scrambling up and down rough hills with 
astonishing agility, while its pace, when alarmed, taxed a good 
horse to equal. An odd dif- 
ference from the other species 
is that when a calf runs with 
its mother it races by her side 
or heels, and not ahead, under 
her guiding horn. 

Extremely keen of scent and 
hearing, one of these animals 
is not easily surprised; and 
when it catches the alarming 
human odor, inspired by that 
sudden blind and insensate 
fury which seems character- 
istic of most rhinoceroses, 
it will spring to its feet, pre- 
pared not only for self-defense, 

but to rush out and attack its enemy. Lowering its great head 
until the horn on its snout points straight forward, it charges 
like some armored knight with lance in rest, and overcomes 
what it strikes by mere weight of onslaught, then returns to 
trample out what shreds of life remain in its fallen foe. 
Often, however, an apparent charge is merely a blind rush 
from panic, dodging which a man is safe, for the beast flees 
straight away for miles. So sharp is the horn and so enor- 
mous the strength of the head and neck behind it, that a 
rhinoceros is able to disembowel and toss over his back any 
smaller animal, while he can upset and rip open even the 
elephant if he can get an opportunity for a flankwise attack; 
but elephants are extremely cautious when rhinos are about. 

383 




Common African Rhinoceros. 




iH 



HUNTING THE RHINOCEROS 

No lion ever meddles with a full-grown kobaoba. The repu- 
tation for blind ferocity outlined above has been increased 
by almost every hunter from Harris and Andersson down. 
Their narratives abound in stories of unexpected attacks and 
dreadful accidents ; vet several of the most experi- „ 

J r Ferocity. 

enccd of modern African sportsmen assert that the 
danger has been exaggerated, though the latter admits that 
some individuals are most vicious. "In my own experience," 
he says, "I always found that black rhinoceroses ran off at once 
on getting the wind of a human being; whilst, on the other 
hand, if they only heard one approaching, they would come 
toward the noise, and I have often known them to trot up to 
within twenty yards of where I was standing, snorting and puff- 
ing loudly ; but as these animals always turned round and went 
off eventually without charging, I came to the conclusion that 
they were inquisitive and very short-sighted rather than vicious." 
Sir Samuel Baker gives in his "Nile Tributaries" 229 a thrilling 
account of how those wonderfully bold and skillful hunters, the 
Hamran Arabs of the Abyssinian interior, chase and kill this 
beast by a hamstringing cut with their heavy swords, followed 
by a coup dc grace in the throat ; and in another book 147 he de- 
scribes how the negroes along the Nile White capture Behemoth 
in a leg trap which is precisely like that heretofore described 
as used for catching gazelles, and is so weighted that he cannot 
get away from the spearmen. 

In C. G. Schillings's " Flashlights in the Jungle" 269 will be 
found many reproductions of photographs of rhinoceroses 
taken in German East Africa, several of which represent them 
as sitting on their haunches in what Schillings says is a favor- 
ite attitude of rest and observation. 



385 



ELEPHANTS, ANCIENT AND MODERN — Order, 
PROBOSCIDEA 



Elephants may be briefly described as large, vegetable-eating 
animals, whose upper lip and nose are together drawn out into 
a proboscis or " trunk," long enough to reach the ground. 
They were once cosmopolites, but now are restricted to Africa 
and tropical Asia. 

The anatomical peculiarities of the elephants (family Elephantidae) 
are largely adaptations to their colossal size, never greater than at present. 





2 3 

Molar Teeth of Elephants. 



4 



I, Mammoth; 2, Mastodon; 3, African Elephant ("lozenge" pattern); 4, Indian 
Elephant. Figures 1, 3, and 4 show the pattern of the dentine ridges in the worn 
crown ; Fig. 2 is a side view of a mastodon's molar. 

To this fact is due the pillarlike straightness of the legs (mediaeval writers 
asserted they had no joints therein), suitable to support so great a body; 
and the hollowness of the huge skull, whose interior is a network of bracing 
plates of bone, set like the struts and ties in a truss bridge, between which 
are air spaces communicating with the mouth and nose. Were the skull 
bones solid, even the muscles of that massive neck could not sustain the 

386 



EVOLUTION OF THE ELEPHANT 

weight of so ponderous a head. The brain is very small, proportionately, 
and of a low type. The feet are short, smaller behind than before, and 
five-toed, each toe being united to its fellow by skin, but covered by a small 
separate hoof. The teeth present another striking peculiarity. There are 
no canines. The incisors are developed into long tusks, either with or 
without a coating of enamel, which in modern elephants exist only in the 
upper jaws, but in some ancient ones grew in both jaws. The cheek teeth 
are large, not easily distinguished as molars and premolars, and consist 
of upright plates of hard dentine, the spaces between which are filled with 
the softer "cement," which wears away more easily; thus the crowns of 
the teeth are kept rough with transverse ridges. The arrangement of the 
dentine plates, and the consequent pattern made by their exposed edges 
on the worn crown, vary with genera and species, and serve as distinguish- 
ing marks. The general anatomy shows a comparatively low organization. 

The elephant is another almost solitary representative of the 
departed glory of a commanding race, — one of the most primi- 
tive, peculiar, and unchanging of the orders of Ungu- 
lates, the Proboscidea. A few in India and Burma, 
saved from destruction only by human guardianship; a few 
more in Africa, soon to become dependent for survival upon 
similar protection, alone remain of a former world full of ele- 
phants. Even a short time ago, as geologists reckon time, ele- 
phants were multitudinous and, so to speak, possessed of great 
estates. The Indian one perhaps never passed beyond the bar- 
riers of desert or mountain north and east of it ; but fossilized 
species closely similar, as well as others more nearly allied to 
the African, preceded it in the Orient or were contemporary 
with the youth of the species ; and our African species, as well 
as extinct predecessors still larger in size, once wandered along 
both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. 
At that time (Miocene) it is believed that dry land nearly or 
altogether divided that sea where it is still narrow between Italy 
and Tunis (the ancient "Africa"), of which land bridge Malta 
is a fragment yet above water; and in the rocks of Malta are 
found remains of adult dwarf elephants no larger than tapirs, 

387 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



along with the bones of the big species. At that time the Brit- 
ish Isles, too, had elephants whose bones, when unearthed in 
mediaeval times, gave rise to strange stories of giants and mon- 
sters among the simple folk of the Thames Valley, as one may 
read in the genial musings of Sir Thomas Browne, or the critical 
histories of Watkins 133 and Boyd-Dawkins. 83 

Back to the Miocene may be traced the history of the genus 
Elephas ; and even the oldest species survived till after man had 

appeared, and might 
very likely have re- 
mained until to-day 
had they not been 
hunted to death. One, 
the mammoth, is 
world-famous, partly 
on account of the fact 
that it was world-wide 
in its distribution, but 
mainly because of the 
fortunate accident by 
which its bodies have 
been preserved to us 
entire in the ice cliffs 
of Siberia — cold-storage warehouses keeping for modern eyes 
many examples of the preglacial fauna. 

In those days the northern parts of both the Old World and 
the New were more extensive in dry land and milder in climate 
than now. The Bering Sea region was partly or wholly out of 
water, and the animals of Asia for unnumbered centuries passed 
dry-shod into Alaska and thence spread southward. The British 
Isles were a part of the continent of Europe, the bed of the 
present German ocean was a wooded plain, and the pine woods 
of Siberia and Canada grew luxuriantly to the borders of the 
Arctic Ocean. Through those far northern forests wandered 




Skull and Tusks of the Imperial Mammoth. 

From a photograph of the specimen on exhibition in 
the American Museum of Natural History, New 
York, showing the inward curve of the tusks, 
hitherto wrongly placed in all mounted skeletons 
and restorations, due to the transposition of the 
tusks — the right-hand one where the left-hand one 
should be. 



FROZEN MAMMALS OF SIBERIA 

many animals fitted to endure a cold climate, for even then, of 
course, the winters were severe. Among these was an elephant 
averaging about the size of a large Indian one, which Mam- 
it much resembled, except in its remarkably small moth, 
and hairy ears and exceedingly long tusks (nine to twelve 
feet), 249 which had a tendency to curve upward and inward 
— not outward, as has usually been erroneously represented; — 
and both sexes had tusks, which is not the case in Asiatic ele- 
phants now. Furthermore, this ancient northern elephant, like 
the woolly rhinoceros of the same time and region, was clothed, 
at least in winter, with a warm yellowish brown under coat ten 
or twelve inches thick, and a bristlelike, darker, and longer upper 
coat, heaviest on the shoulders, together forming a most suit- 
able garment for an animal in a semiarctic climate. Otherwise 
the mammoth varied only in minor features from those ele- 
phants now before our eyes. 

The first remains of the mammoth were found in the perpetually frozen 
cliffs of earth and ice which border the estuary of the Lena River in 1799, 
and a few years later the skeleton was brought almost entire to St. Peters- 
burg, where it may be still seen. Since that time, landslides and thawings 
have revealed other carcasses, from which, when lucky enough to find them, 
the Yakuts cut flesh to feed their dogs, and perchance got salable tusks. 
The offering of such a tusk disclosed to the Russians at Kolyma, in 1900, 
the discover)- of an especially complete carcass, which in 1901 Dr. O. F. 
Herz was able to bring with much completeness to St. Petersburg, and to 
mount in the Imperial Museum. It is plain that this last animal died by 
miring itself in an attempt to get to or from the river. Their stomachs 
show that these Siberian mammoths fed on the leaves and twigs of the pine. 
Thousands of carcasses, however, were floated away to sea by the Siberian 
rivers; perhaps thousands annually, for the islands of their estuaries con- 
tain such masses of skeletons that these bone beds are regularly mined in 
search of fossil ivory — a recognized article of Siberian commerce, and, 
although yellowed by age, nearly as good as "living" ivory. 

"From the earliest times fossil ivory was derived from the buried lusks 
of these elephants. The ancient Chinese worked in it, and even had such 
ideas about the edibility of the animal's flesh as makes it probable that they 
knew that carcasses were occasionally found on the arctic coast. This ivory 

389 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

was known to the Greeks, and the 'licorne' sent as a present by Haroun-al- 
Raschid to Charlemagne is believed to be a mammoth's tusk. Arabic writers 
Fossil °f the tenth century mention it as an article of regular Rus- 

Ivory. s ian trade, and ever since that time fossil ivory has come from 

Siberia at a rate calculated to be not less than one hundred pairs of tusks a 
year. Among the strange conceptions of the animal which furnished this 
ivory that arose among people ignorant of elephants was that of the Chinese, 
who said it must be a mole ('mammoth' is derived from a Tatar-Russian 
term, meaning earth burro wer), because its remains were always found 
underground. This was not so illogical as the pious hypothesis held in 
Europe that these bones were those of St. Christopher." 20 

Naturalists cannot explain why the mammoths disap- 
peared. They survived the Glacial period and ranged numer- 
ously as far south as the middle of Europe and the central 
United States, so that their extinction cannot be laid to climate. 
They lasted at any rate in the Old World long after the ap- 
pearance of man, persisting even into his Neolithic stage, as 
is proved by associated remains, and prettily demonstrated 
by the famous sketch of the mammoth, etched on a piece of 
its own ivory, by a French artist whose studio was a cave in 
the valley of the Loire; and who showed a better skill in ani- 
mal drawing than is easily commanded to-day in studios by 
the Seine. The primitive men, assailing the mammoth in 
numbers, driving it into inclosures, and entrapping it in pit- 
falls, could overcome it as less capable savages do modern ele- 
phants ; and it is probable that in Europe, at least the waning 
species was finally terminated by human agency. 

Contemporary with the early Miocene elephants was an 
Asiatic kind with peculiar teeth called Stegodon; and still 
farther away from the type in tooth structure was another, 
existing at the same time, set apart in the genus Mastodon, 
of which I have given an account elsewhere as follows : — 

"Mastodons began to exist in the Miocene age and became extinct in 
the Pleistocene. They were scattered all over the globe, and more than 
thirty species have been distinguished by palaeontologists, the latest 

39o 



HISTORY OF THE MASTODON 

described (1901) being a small and primitive type discovered in Egypt. 

This seems to confirm the prevailing opinion that the group originated 

in the Old World and spread to America by way of Siberia. 

. ,_. . Mastodon. 

Two or more species belong to South America (Patagonia), 

where no other elephant has thus far been found. It is probable that 
several species lived in North America, but the one best known and com- 
monly in mind when the term is used is Mastodon amcricanus. This species 
seems to have ranged over all the United States and southern Canada, and 
to have been numerous, for its teeth and bones, in a more or less perfect con- 
dition, are repeatedly found. A dozen or more mounted skeletons are on 
exhibition in museums in New York, Chicago, Pittsburg, Cambridge, 
Albany, and elsewhere. Careful comparison and study of these and other 
specimens show that this mastodon at least must have had the general form 
and appearance of a modern elephant, with a somewhat heavier body and 
flatter forehead than that of the mammoth or Indian elephant; nor did its 
height exceed theirs on the average — if anything it was less. The tusks, 
too, were of similar length (nine feet, measured along the outer curve, indi- 
cating an old and large male), and they had a characteristic tendency to 
curl upward, sometimes almost completing a circle. 

"It is probable that the animal, at any rate in the more northerly parts 
of its -range, was warmly clothed like the mammoth, although there is not 
much direct evidence of it beyond the discovery, many years ago, of a large 
mass of woolly brown hair buried in bog in Ulster County, N.Y., in 
apparent connection with mastodon remains. Several of the most com- 
plete skeletons known have been obtained from that region, where animals 
had become mired in swampy valleys. The disappearance of this numer- 
ous and widespread species is as incomprehensible as in the case of the 
mammoth and the South American horse. That it existed until recent 
conditions were established is plain. The food remains in its stomach have 
been repeatedly analyzed, and found to consist of herbage, bark, and leaves 
of the same kinds as now grow in the place where its bones lay. ... It is the 
opinion of competent judges that remnants of the herds survived the advent 
of mankind into North America; but the evidence is not indubitable." 20 

More anciently there existed a coordinate family, the Dino- 
theriidae, the remains of whose single genus are en- Dinothe- 
tombed in the Tertiary strata of Europe and Asia. num " 

The dinothere, says Beddard, occupies the most primitive position 
among the Proboscidea, but cannot be considered an ancestor of the ele- 

39i 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



phants. It was of gigantic size, perhaps eighteen feet long, for the skull 
measures a yard fore and aft. The structure of the teeth resembles that 
of the teeth of tapirs; but from the elongated and downward-bent lower 
jaw grew two long incisor-tusks unlike anything else known in animal 
dentition. "The enormous weight of the lower jaw and tusks seems to 
argue that it was at least partially aquatic in habit, and that it may have 

used these tusks for grubbing up aquatic 
roots or for mooring itself to the bank." 

Such has been the history of the 
noble but decadent elephant family. 
Its nearest living ally, as has been 
said (page 232), is the quaint little 
cony of the order Hyracoidea. The 
origin of the elephants had not until 
recently been traced, but that they 
were an offshoot from the primitive 
condylarths could not be doubted. 
Professor H. F. Osborn stated in 
1900 that the early ancestors of 
the Proboscidea would probably be 
found in the then unexplored Eo- 
cene formations of Africa. This prediction was realized in 
1902, when Dr. Andrews examined this formation in Egypt 
for the British Museum, and obtained fossil evidence con- 
necting the elephants with the primitive hoofed animals, and 
showing the successive stages by which the huge grinding- 
African teeth, tusks, and trunk were gradually developed. 
Origin. j^ brief review of the history of the family in the 

light of these new facts will be useful. 




DlNOTHERIUM. 

Probable outline of 
head; the big tusks 
of the lower jaw 
were probably used 
in raking up roots 
from the mud of 
rivers and lakes. 



The series begins in the Middle Eocene with Mcerotherium, an animal 
of moderate size, with a full set of tapirlike teeth, no trunk, and no tusks, 
but the middle incisor teeth enlarged in both jaws. In Paleomastodon of 
the Upper Eocene, the incisors are reduced to a pair of small tusks in each 
jaw, there is a short trunk, and the back grinders are becoming larger, 
while the fore ones are degenerating. In the Miocene Dinotherium (a 

392 



EVOLUTION OF TUSKS AND TRUNK 




side branch) the lower tusks are enlarged, while the upper ones disappear. 
In Trilophodon, in the direct line of descent, the upper tusks become larger, 
the lower ones smaller, 
while the grinding teeth 
are reduced in number 
but increased in size, 
and their cross ridges 
are increased in number 
and height. In masto- 
don the lower tusks are 
rudimentary or absent, 
while the upper ones 
are of huge size, and 
the length of the trunk 
and form of the head 
approaches that of the 
modern elephant. In 
the mammoth, and in 
the existing elephants, 
no trace is left of the 
lower tusks, the upper 
ones are of enormous 
size, and the grinders, 
of great size and per- 
fection, are reduced to 
one, on each side of 
each jaw in the adult. 
This series exhibits a 
steady increase in the 
length of the trunk, 
and the height and massiveness of the animal, and a corresponding 
lengthening of the trunk to enable the creature to reach the ground. 



Trilofhodon Angustidens. 

primitive mastodon, found fossil in the Middle 
Miocene strata of the south of France. " Its ' trunk' 
must have rested horizontally on W\z lower jaw be- 
tween the upper tusks — and was, in fact, not a 
1 trunk ' at all, but an elongated upper lip — represent- 
ing the middle part of the upper jaw in a soft, flexible 
condition. It seemed to me probable that the 
elephant's trunk had originated in this way; namely, 
by the great elongation, in the first place, of the lower 
jaw and upper lip and jaw, and by the subsequent 
shrinking of the lower jaw, and ' bull-dogging ' of the 
bones of the face. Thus the elongated mid-part of 
the face — no longer supported by a long lower jaw — 
would gradually drop as the lower jaw grew shorter 
and shorter in successive ages, and at last it would 
hang down as a perpendicular trunk. ... It is very 
difficult to form a definite idea as to how the Tri- 
lophodon made use of his tusks and horizontal 
'trunk.' The upper tusks have a sharp edge along 
the inner face, strengthened by enamel, so that it is 
probable that, working against the tough skin pads of 
the lower jaw, they would serve for cutting vegetable 
matter." — LanKESTER. 13 '' 



The two existing kinds of elephants illustrate the difference 
between the Eastern and the Western types. The Indian ele- 
phant is a creature of the dense forests and swampy Indian 
grass jungles of Ceylon, eastern India, and the Elephant. 
Malay region. This is the one the world has known longest 
and most familiarly, and from which it has derived most of 

393 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the popular ideas of elephant nature. Around it has gathered 
a great mass of history, tradition, and fable ; and it figures in 
the mythology and folk-lore of the East to an almost unlimited 
degree. Personified in one of the most ancient, 
respectable, and popular of Hindoo The Eie- 
divinities, Ganesha, the wise and phant God * 
humorous god who is invoked at 
the beginning of all enterprises, 
whose auspicious 
image is placed 
over most Hindoo 



This series shows 
the progressive 
shortening of 
the lower jaws, 

elevation of the cranium, recession 
("bull-dogging") of the bones of 
the face, disappearance of lower- 
jaw tusks, and lengthening of 
upper-jaw tusks, which was accom- 
panied by a corresponding devel- 
opment of the trunk, i, Eocene Mceritherium ; 2, Eocene 
Palseomastodon ; 3, Miocene Trilophodon ; 4, American Mas- 
todon ; 5, Living Indian Elephant. {After Lankester.) 

Development of Skull-form and Tusks in Elephants. 





doorways, and whose mystic sign [the swastika 254 ], familiarly 
spoken of as the "ganesh," stands on the first page of Hindoo 
ledgers and day books, the elephant has an immense hold on 
the affections of the people. " The traveller and the pilgrim 
look to Ganesha for protection, the merchant for fortune, the 
student for advancement, and the housewife for luck. . . . 
Although at first sight merely monstrous to Western eyes, this 
quaint personage grows in interest as one learns his attributes 
and becomes familiar with his character and person. He 
seems, as he sits meditatively poising his heavy head, to be 
the Nick Bottom of the Hindu Pantheon." The literature of 
the East abounds in allusion to its mystic sacredness, which 
culminates in the veneration paid to the albinos of Burma and 
Siam. 

394 



ELEPHANTS IN SERVICE 

More earthly and historic are the voluminous accounts 
extant of the employment of elephants throughout Asia in 
the past, when they were the most powerful war engines of 
the Orient, making irresistible the armies of Persia, Assyria, 
Babylon, Egypt, and even of Greece and Rome, in their suc- 
cessive adventures toward conquest; and this aspect of their 
history and service, given with a wealth of curious details by 
Broderip 15 and by Watkins, 133 may be recommended to the 
reader fond of antique lore. In this martial record the African 
elephant has a large share, for 2500 years ago it, too, was 
subjugated by the people south of the Mediterranean, and 
those taken across the Alps by Hannibal were a natural con- 
tingent of an African army. Long before that, when Ptolemy 
had marched his hosts of Greeks into the Nile Valley, his 
Indian elephant cavalry had met Sudanese war elephants on 
the side of the Egyptians, and had worsted them. 

The Indian elephant of to-day, while roaming in free herds 
through its native jungles, is nevertheless practically a subject 
animal, for now the British Indian rulers, and only to a less 
extent the allied governments of Burma and Siam, know the 
position and numbers of all the herds, and preserve them from 
wanton destruction by strictly enforced laws. This is done 
in order that the supply shall not be wasted, for the elephant 
so rarely produces young in captivity that practically its in- 
crease cannot be counted upon at all. Hence the recruits 
needed to meet the demand for private ownership of riding 
and hunting animals, or to sustain the dignity of native courts, 
in addition to those required for governmental service, Capture of 
must be captured from wild stock. This is done Elephants, 
usually by surrounding a band in the forest and driving 
it into a prepared pen or "keddah," — a corral of palisades 
of vast strength, — where tamed elephants, under control of 
their mahouts, partly force and partly persuade the frightened 
and furious strangers to submit to enslavement. It is aston- 

395 




396 



AFRICAN ELEPHANTS 

ishing how soon, in most cases, they do so, becoming docile 
the moment the conviction forces itself into their minds that 
it is inevitable; or perhaps when calmness succeeds fright 
they do not care. Since photography has come to our aid as a 
means of illustration — nowhere more welcome and valuable 
than in natural history — magazines have abounded in pic- 
turesque descriptions of the scenes at these keddah captures; 
and innumerable books outside of the general zoologies con- 
tain vivid accounts of the habits of the elephants, wild and 
trained, in the East, of which the foremost are those of Sander- 
son, 162 and Baker 147 for India, Tennent for Ceylon, 17 and Pollok 
for Burma. 156 In general, no essay upon the habits and char- 
acter of elephants, both Asiatic and African, is more informa- 
tory and accurate than the three chapters devoted to these ani- 
mals in Sir Samuel Baker's admirable "Wild Beasts and their 
Ways." 

The African elephant is so different from its Indian cousin 
that some competent authorities place it in a separate genus. 
The bulls are taller on the average than Indian African 
elephants, frequently ten feet at the highest part ep ant * 
of the arched back (" Jumbo," the only one of this species 
ever seen in the United States until 1905, was eleven feet); 
but the females average smaller than in the other species. 
African cows have much larger tusks (which both sexes use 
industriously in digging up the roots that form a large part of 
their food in Africa), a fact injurious to the longevity of the 
species since man has coveted ivory, for it leads to the killing 
of cows as well as bulls; the molar teeth also differ in struc- 
ture, and there are but three functional toes on the hind foot. 

More easily recognizable distinctions are the fact that the 
leaf-shaped ears of the African elephant are of huge size (Gro- 
gan measured one eighteen feet in circumference), lying far 
back on the shoulders when at rest; the profile of the face 
slopes more backward; and the head lacks those two bosses 

397 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"which give so wise a countenance to the Indian species"; 
finally, the tip of the trunk has a slight triangular projection on 
its under as well as its upper side, — two" fingers" instead of one. 

Great diversity exists, however, among, African elephants, and it is not 
yet determinable whether the distinctions are worthy of specific rank or 
not. Dr. Paul Matschie, 270 one of the foremost authorities on African 
mammals, has separated them into four kinds, distinguished prominently 
by the size and shape of the ears. One of these varieties (or species) is a 
dwarf race, only four or five feet tall when full grown, inhabiting West 
Africa north of the lower Kongo. Not much is known of it, but a speci- 
men has been living in the New York Zoological Park since July, 1905. 
It is interesting to note that it seems to resemble most the dwarf elephants 
(fossil) of Malta and eastward; and also that it comes from the same 
region as the pygmy hippopotamus. 

This animal represents the last of a race with a long 
fossil history in Europe, and is a comparatively recent immi- 
grant into Africa, where, when white men first began to ex- 
plore the continent, it ranged everywhere outside the deserts. 
It had disappeared south of the Zambezi, and near the coast, 
except as to a few small preserved herds, before the nineteenth 
century closed; but throughout the vast forests and swamps 
between the Nile sources and the lower Kongo, this elephant 
still exists in countless thousands, and is little disturbed. 
There it is likely to remain plentiful for a long time to come, 
as European governments have agreed upon various laws, 
including a close season for females, and an export duty on 
the tusks, by which it is hoped to prevent rapid extermination. 
Indeed, in many parts elephants are a bar to the civilization of 
the natives, at least by means of agriculture, by destroying plan- 
tations in a way the negroes are powerless to prevent. 

"The most remarkable elephant country," says Ewart Scott Grogan, in 
Everybody's Magazine for April, 1901, "is undoubtedly Toro, and all the 
lower slopes of the Mountains of the Moon (Ruwenzori on the maps, but 
known to the natives as Runzonvoro). Here the prevailing feature is 
undulating hills covered with elephant grass (a coarse cane brake growing 

398 



ELEPHANT HERDS 

to a height of twenty feet). . . . Our camp was pitched on the top of a small 
hill that jutted out from the main wall of the valley, and consequently we 
enjoyed an uninterrupted view across and up and down the river. . . . Our 
tents were barely pitched when we saw an enormous bull elephant emerge 
from the papyrus, and come gliding across the open country to reach the 
welcome shade of the trees in a gorge to our right. Then two more big 
bulls appeared, and followed majestically in his wake. They had not gone 
far when the wall of papyrus behind them shuddered, staggered, and col- 
lapsed, while a ceaseless stream of elephants, big and little, stately and 
skittish, burst upon our astonished gaze. On they came, a herd of fully 
two hundred, the bulls in front straggling in twos and threes, then a solid 
phalanx of cows, out of which from time to time little fellows not more than 
three feet high ran bewildered, then, steadied by the shrill trumpet of their 
mammas, scurried back. The mass seemed to glide over the country like 
an avalanche, raising a great trailing cloud of red dust that dimmed the 
outlines and gave the impression of some hateful tide soaking up the land. 
Great clumps of bushes, acres of elephant grass, loomed up in front, swayed, 
and were no more. 

"On it swept, this wondrous mass of life, nearer and nearer, till great 
ivories glinted white in the red-gray wave; and yet never a sound except 
the screech of a circling kite, and the occasional ludicrous trumpeting of 
an anxious mamma. Our camp was too high, and the motion of the ele- 
phant is peculiarly noiseless. As we watched, another herd of thirty 
emerged from the papyrus, then another herd, and yet another one hundred 
strong, till the whole valley seemed to be streaked with elephants. Ye 
gods ! it was a wonderful sight. 

"The tusks of the Toro elephants are enormous; I myself secured one 
weighing 138I pounds, from Kasagama, the king of Toro. Many heavier 
ones have gone out of the country through the Swahili traders. The heavi- 
est that I shot myself scaled 98 pounds (dry), and others scaled 86, 85, 87, 
78, 78, 69, 69, all of which would be considered unusually large in South 
Africa." 

It may be mentioned that, according to Lankester 137 the heaviest Afri- 
can tusk on record is one in the British Museum, ten feet two inches long 
along the outer curvature, and weighing 228 pounds; a tusk of 150 pounds 
is considered very large. 



399 



MANATEES AND SEA COWS — Order, SIRENIA 

This is a small group of aquatic animals, living along the 
marshy shores of both salt and fresh waters, and feeding 
wholly upon aquatic vegetation. Their geological history 
goes back to the early Tertiary, but previously is quite un- 
known, and their relation to other animals is obscure; the 
prevailing opinion is, that they represent an always aquacic 
line of descent from creodont sources allied to those which 
gave rise to the Ungulata. They are seal-like in general form, 
but far more clumsy, with round heads and almost hairless 
bodies. The hind limbs are absent, only a trace of pelvis 
remaining; the fore limbs are inclosed in a mittenlike web- 
bing, and thus are modified into swimming organs, but there 
is no such multiplication of bones as occurs in a whale's flip- 
pers; the tail is flattened and either whalelike (forked) or 
paddle-form. The teats are two, and are borne on the chest. 

Of the extinct forms the best known is the great rhytina, which in the 

eighteenth century was found by Russian navigators densely populating 

islands on the Siberian coast of Bering Sea. The naturalist Steller 203 

was with one of the first expeditions and published an elaborate memoir on 

_ the animal. It was much like the dugong in form, 20 to 30 feet 

Rhytina. , .'■,",, ^ , , . n , ,., , - T 

long, weighed 600 to 800 pounds, and its flesh was like beef. It 

lived in herds feeding on seaweed, and could neither defend itself nor escape 

from the seal hunters, who slaughtered it by wholesale for ship provisions. 

All were killed by 1767, and we should know almost nothing of the creature 

had not Stejneger made a special trip to Bering and Copper islands in 1883 

to collect its bones and any information accessible. 251 

A more truly fossil sirenian is Halitherium, which seems to have been 

almost universally distributed during the Miocene period. 

400 





Manatee. 



401 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Dugong is the Malay name of the sea cow of the Old World, 
found in the Red Sea, among the East Indies, and on Aus- 
tralian coasts. It is thus marine in its nature, but is 

Dugong. 

inclined to gather near the shore in herds, which 
formerly sometimes numbered hundreds, and browses on the 
algae which grow on submarine rocks in shallow places. The 
mother's affectionate care of her offspring, which she nurses 
embraced to her bosom as she stands upright in the 
water, is proverbial in the East ; and it has long been believed 
that it furnished the original model of our mermaids; but 
the mermaid was a popular notion in the Orient long before 
Westerners knew anything about the dugong. These ani- 
mals, although formerly much hunted for the sake of their oil- 
blubber, are still extremely numerous in the vast grassy bays 
of the Queensland coast ; but elsewhere dugongs are now rare. 
Prominent distinguishing features of the dugongs are the 
sudden downward bending of the overhanging upper jaw in 
the male, and its two strong incisor tusks. 

Tropical America has a sirenian quite different both in 
structure and habits. Instead of being almost black it is dark 
gray, and its skin is finely wrinkled and sparsely 
haired, especially about the head; the tail is not 
forked but rounded, and the flippers may bear small fin- 
ger nails. Another remarkable fact is that instead of a few 
teeth as in the dugong, or none at all as in the rhytina, the 
manatee has many, which apparently go on increasing indefi- 
nitely during life. As many as twenty molar teeth have been 
counted in one half of the jaw, and they may get still 
more numerous. "This large number of grinding teeth 
is obviously suggestive of the whales, with which the Sirenia 
are believed by some to be allied. It is at least a remark- 
able coincidence that these two aquatic groups of mammals 
should both have assumed the same indefinite tooth for- 
mula. . . . The animal is assisted in feeding by a curious 

402 



SOUTH AMERICAN MANATEE 

mechanism of the upper lip; this is split in two, and the two 
halves, which are furnished with strong bristles, can play upon 
each other like the points of a pair of forceps." 

Manatees were once plentiful on both coasts of Florida, 
but now a few carefully guarded near Miami alone remain. 
They still wallow in all the inlets and estuaries along the Gulf 
coast of Central America ; and the South American nail-less 
species is one of the commonest game animals of the Amazon 
and Orinoco basins, incessantly hunted by both Indians and 
white men for the flesh and the oil. Dampier's opinion of the 
edibility of the animal in Campeachy was this: — 

"Their Flesh is white, both the Fat and the Lean, and extraordinary 
sweet, wholesome meat. The tail of a young cow is most esteemed; but 
if old, both Head and Tail are very tough. A Calf that sucks is the most 
delicate meat; Privateers commonly roast them: as they do great Pieces 
cut out of the Bellies of the old ones." 



Here, did it fall within my plan, would follow the history 
and account of the whales, grampuses, porpoises, and related 
marine mammals, of the order Cetacea. The leading authori- 
ties for unscientific readers on this group of animals are Bed- 
dard, 255 Bullen, 256 Scammon, 189 and the publications of the 
United States Bureau of Fisheries. 




Whalebone in Mouth of a Baleen Whale. 

403 



THE GNAWERS — Order, RODENTIA 



Teeth. 



We come now to one of the most numerous, widespread, 
and familiar groups of mammals, — the rodents, or animals 
that gnaw. They are smallish, furry or spiny, vegetable- 
eating animals, sharply distinguished by their dentition. The 
characteristic and most important teeth are the incisors, — 
the gnawers. These are two only in each jaw (except in the 
rabbits and pikas), and are very long and strong, their roots 
extending back through the jaws to the hinder part of the 
skull, where they have "persistent pulps," that is, 
the formative organ remains active, so that the 
tooth continues to grow throughout the animal's life. 

This provision maintains in the teeth the length and strength needed 
for the continual gnawing upon which the animal depends for its liveli- 
hood. It is equally requisite, however, that they should always be sharp, 
and this is provided for by having the general substance of the tooth a 
comparatively soft dentine, while the front is coated with a layer of much 
harder, glasslike material called enamel. The end of the tooth is chisel- 
shaped, and as the dentine wears away faster than the enameled front, a 
sharp cutting edge is always maintained ; this, too, wears away somewhat, 
but is steadily pushed forward by the active growth at the root to make 

up for the loss, so that the ro- 
dent always has his tools in 
good order. In the best gnaw- 
ers these incisors are thicker 
than wide, and are often 
brown or yellow, and perhaps 
grooved, upon the outer sur- 
Lower Jaw of a Beaver. face. Another provision of 

interest is, that inside the 

Showing the vast length of the ever growing . 

incisor («), and position of the molars (m), mouth, behind the incisor, 

characteristic of the dentition of rodents. there is a hairy ingrowth from 

404 




RODEXT CHAR A C TERIS TICS 

each cheek, which meet and form a barrier against the passage into the throat 
of chips and dust dislodged in cutting wood or digging in the ground. 

The back teeth have a similar growth in certain kinds, but 
more often are rooted and grow only for a limited period like 
ordinary teeth ; "are quite straight and perpendicular, and 
their crowns, worn flat by mutual attrition, present an in- 
tricate and endlessly varied pattern of the enamel folds," use- 
ful in distinguishing the different groups and species. No 
rodent has more than three molars, but the premolars when 
present vary in number. The brain is primitive in type, but 
in the larger rodents shows furrows in proportion to the ani- 
mal's size, according to the general rule that large creatures 
have brains with more surface convolutions than little ones; 
an odd exception, however, is the beaver, which, although 
comparatively big, and manifesting superior intelligence, has 
a remarkably smooth brain. 

The rodents embrace an 
enormous number of genera 
and species. "They are dis- 
tributed all over the world, 
including the Australian re- 
gion, and, being small and meadow mouse. 

Often nocturnal, and bv no Showing how the cheeks close in behind 

the incisors. 

means particular in their diet, 

have managed to thrive and multiply to a greater extent 
than any other group of living mammals. They are chiefly 
terrestrial creatures, and often burrow or live in ready-made 
burrows. Some, however, such as the voles, are aquatic; 
others, e.g. the squirrels, are arboreal, and there are 'flying' 
rodents exemplified by the genus Anomalurus." It is evi- 
dently needful to sort this immense and diversified assem- 
blage into natural groups in order to examine it. The 
incisor teeth, which form the most characteristic feature of 

405 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the order, afford a basis at once for a prime division into 
two suborders thus: — 

I. Duplicidentata, — having four upper incisors ; and 

II. Sitnplicidentata, — having two upper incisors. 

The first of these suborders (also termed Lagomorpha) 
contains two families of " double- toothed " rodents: (i) the 
pikas, small, short-eared and tailless; (2) the hares, larger, 
long- eared and tailed. 

The second, "single-toothed," suborder contains all the 
remainder, — several hundred species. It is evident that 
here convenience, at least, requires a still further classifica- 
tion. Examining the mass, it becomes plain that this suborder 
has developed along three distinct lines, represented .respec- 
tively by the porcupine, the rat, and the squirrel. 

The rodents are a very ancient race, traceable by fossil forms 
as far back as the early part of Tertiary times. The types 
mentioned above are plainly to be distinguished 
nces ry. - n ^ e oldest Miocene, but the Eocene has as yet 
produced nothing but the lowest, or squirrel, type. The strik- 
ing fact about this history is that no essential change has taken 
place in the rodent type since the Miocene; and it is prob- 
able that the divisions of the Rodentia are descended from 
corresponding groups of a single primary source. This pri- 
mary source, in the opinion of Professor Cope, a high authority 
here, may have been the group Tillodontia. Other indica- 
tions point to derivation from ancestral Marsupialia, with or 
without the intervention of the Tillodontia. 

The Tillodontia are a small group of primitive mammals, fossil in the 
earliest Tertiary strata, chiefly of North America, which developed perhaps 
at first in advance of the Rodentia, and later beside them. They are very 
generalized in structure, having, for instance, in the upper jaw not only the 
three pairs of incisors of the normal mammalian set, which have been lost 
wholly or in part by the rodents, but also having definitely marked pre- 
molars. Already, however, the canines had disappeared to mere rudi- 

406 



AXCESTRY OF R0DEXT1A 



ments, the outer pair of incisors had been greatly reduced, and the second 
pair been much enlarged. Moreover, while those of the earliest tillodonts 
do not seem to have grown from persistent pulps, the incisors of the later 
genera (as Tillotherium) did do so. Similar features tending toward the 
modern rodents are seen elsewhere in the structure. Nevertheless, the 
tillodonts seem not to have been in the direct line of ancestry, and 
came to an end with the close of the Miocene period. The largest 
of them was the most recent form, Tillotherium, which was as big 
as a small bear. 

We may now take up the Rodentia in order, beginning with 
the Duplicidentata, because they are of a more primitive type, 

as shown by the dental 

resemblance to the tillo- jBBllBx- 1 =s^ 

donts, in having two pairs 

of incisor teeth in the 

upper jaw, although the 

inner pair is small and 

hidden behind the big 

outer pair ; and sometimes 

there appear in earliest 

infancy traces of a third 

pair. 

The hares and rabbits 
form a compact family 
(Leporidae) of some sixty 
species, scattered in all 
divisions of the globe ex- 
cept Australasia and Madagascar ; but only one species occurs 
in South America, and the family is most numerous in north- 
erly regions, where these animals form an important food 
resource for man and beast. All are much alike in the long, 
high-haunched hind legs, which give great leaping and dodg- 
ing power; tall, erectile ears; divided upper lip; short scut; 
and grizzled gray brown coat, with various specific markings 
of white and black. The only exceptional one is the " hispid" 

407 




European Hare. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



Rabbits. 



hare of northeastern India, which has small eyes, bristly short 
ears, short hind legs, and much the manner of a rabbit. 

The term " rabbit" has wholly replaced "hare" in America, 
because the common small hare of the eastern United States, 
quickly seen by the first English settlers, looked 
to them more like the rabbit they had known at 
home than like their bigger hare ; and they ignored the differ- 
ence in habits as they did so many other facts in their careless 

naming of the ani- 
mals of the New 
World after those 
of Europe. It must 
always be remem- 
bered that the first 
Pilgrims, Puritans, 
and southern "ad- 
venturers" were 
mainly from cities, 
and knew little of 
rural things, to 
which ignorance, by 
the way, they owed most of their early misfortunes in the colonies. 
The true rabbit or "cony" differs from its relatives by its 
small size (average weight two and a half to three pounds), 
short ears and hind legs ; but more in its habits, for its young 
are born naked, blind, and helpless, and it is comparatively 
slow-footed. Hence it has been compelled to become a bur- 
rower for the safety of both itself and its babies, and, as is 
usual with animals become burrowers, has acquired the habit 
of gathering in communities, whose crowded diggings or "war- 
rens" are labyrinths of subterranean runways. Even this, 
however, would hardly suffice to preserve this timid and nearly 
defenseless race were not several litters of five to eight young 
(leverets) produced by each pair annually to make good the 

408 




Brownell, Phot. 

American Cottontail Rabbit. 



PLAGUE OF RABBITS IN AUSTRALIA 

loss from enemies and disease* The original European wild 
rabbit is grayish brown, becoming foxy on the neck, but this 
rabbit has been domesticated since ancient times, and altera- 
tions of coloring as well as of form have been produced. Ten 
or more distinct breeds are recognized by fanciers, some of 
which, as the lop-eared, the great Belgian, and the Angora, 
are far away from the original type. All are described, and 
methods of rearing and caring for rabbits are taught in sev- 
eral books by Knight, 70 Morant, 71 and other fanciers. 

Their amazing fecundity has caused rabbits to multiply into an almost 
uncontrollable pest since they were unwisely introduced into Australia and 
New Zealand, where the scarcity of beasts of prey allowed them to increase 
without bounds. 104 In a few years, therefore, the whole country was over- 
run by millions, which threatened to devour not only all the crops but every 
bit of wild herbage ; even in Europe, when for any reason their subjection is 
neglected, they do great damage to gardens, orchards, and plantations of 
young trees. Writing about 1895, Dr. Lydekker recorded the result of 
the introduction of a few rabbits about 1850 into Australia, and about 1875 
into Xew Zealand, as follows : — 

"The inhabitants of the colony soon found that the rabbits were a plague, 
for they devoured the grass which was needed for the sheep, the bark of 
trees, and every kind of fruit and vegetables, until . . . ruin seemed inevitable. 
In Xew South Wales upwards of fifteen million rabbit-skins have been ex- 
ported in a single year; while in the thirteen years ending in 1889 no less 
than thirty-nine million were accounted for in Victoria alone. To prevent 
the increase of these rodents, the introduction of weasels, stoats, mungooses, 
etc., has been tried; but it has been found that these carnivores neglected 
the rabbits and took to feeding on poultry, and thus became as great a 
nuisance as the animals they were intended to destroy. The attempt to 
kill them off by the introduction of an epidemic disease has also failed. In 
order to protect such portions of the country as are still free from rabbits, 
fences of wire netting have been erected, one of these fences erected by the 
government of Victoria extending for a distance upwards of one hundred 
and fifty geographical miles. In New Zealand ... its increase has been so 
enormous, and the destruction it inflicts so great, that in some districts it 
has actually been a question whether the colonists should not vacate the 
country rather than attempt to fight against the plague." 

At present further use is being made of the rabbits by " packing" their 
edible flesh in various forms as an article of preserved food, which is finding 
a wide market; and probably the pest will be abated in course of time by 

409 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

natural processes. Thus far no notable changes have taken place in these 
colonial rabbits; but elsewhere, e.g. in Malta, special local varieties have 




Hares. 



Southwestern Jack Rabbit and Kangaroo Mouse. 

arisen from the imported stock, upon which Darwin has discoursed at 
length in illustration of his opinion that variations are often due to altered 
environment. 

Returning to the hares, not much need be said as to partic- 
ular species. All dwell either in open grassy country or else 
among rocks and bushes. They do not flock, nor 
make any sort of shelter, but each inhabits a cer- 
tain small district, where it makes a smooth resting place 
called its "form." To this it will return day after day for a 
long time unless frightened; and in such a form the young 
are born and are left concealed, when still in the suckling age, 
under a cover of leaves and vines, or even of fur plucked by 
the mother from her own loose coat and felted into a sort of 
blanket. They seek no better shelter than this in winter, 
except that some, as our common little cottontail, will creep into 

410 



THE HARE AXD ITS ENEMIES 



the mouth of an old skunk's or woodchuck's hole or within 
a hollow stump, to seek protection from the "cauld blast." 
The '"jacks" of the Plains are so well furred that even the 
soles of their feet are warm mats of hair; and they are the 
only small animals able to survive outside of burrows the in- 
tense winter cold and 
gales of those bleak up- I 
lands. This hardihood is 
due primarily, of course, | 
to the fact that hares 
are able to find nutritious 
forage all through the 
winter, and so keep up 
their bodily heat. 

All species have great 
speed, — their principal 
means of safety, — and 
the swiftest hounds are 
hardly able to run them 
down; while they also 
have astonishing skill in 
suddenly halting and turn- 
ins:, or "doubling," bv 




Molly Cottontail. 



which they gain a fresh 
start before their more clumsy pursuers can perceive what has 
happened, and change their course. Chasing them with grey- 
hounds is a regular sport called "coursing." Along with this goes 
extreme timidity and watchfulness, in which their big ears serve 
a most useful purpose, rising to the slightest sound, but dropping 
out of the way as the animal makes off in a series of tremendous 
leaps ; and the hare can make faster time uphill than down, ow- 
ing to the greater length of the hind legs — a decided advantage. 
Knowing these tricks, most of its enemies resort to counter- 
strategy, — a stealthy approach and quick rush ; and an 

411 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

excellent picture of these wiles, and poor Bunny's efforts to meet 
them, may be read in Seton's tale of "Raggylug," and in such 
delightful writings as those of Audubon and Bachman, God- 
man, Kennicott, Lockwood, Abbott, Robinson, Sharp, Cram, 
and some others. Even the least of the tribe, however, is able 
to make a defense which often completely disconcerts the foe, 
and the means are found in its strong hind feet. Mr. Sharp 72 
gives an American illustration: — 



"Molly feeds the family shortly after nightfall, and always tucks them 
in when leaving, with the caution to lie quiet and still. She is not often 
surprised with her young, but lingers near on guard. You can easily tell 
if you are in the neighborhood of her nest by the way she thumps and 
watches you, and refuses to be driven off. Here she waits, and if anything 
smaller than a dog appears she rushes to meet it, stamping the ground in 
fury. A dog she will intercept by leaving a warm trail across his. path, or, 
in case the brute has no nose for her scent, by throwing herself in front of 
him and drawing him off on a long chase. 

"One day as I was quietly picking strawberries on a hill, I heard a 
curious grunting down the side below me, then the quick thud! thud! of 
an angry rabbit. Among the bushes I caught a glimpse of rabbit ears. A 
fight was on. Crouching beside a bluish spot, which I knew to be a rabbit's 
nest, was a big yellow cat. He had discovered the young ones, and making 
mouths at the thought of how they would taste, when the mother's thump 
startled him. He squatted flat, with ears back, tail swelled, and hair 
standing up along his back, as the rabbit leaped over him. It was a glimpse 
of Molly's ears as she made the jump that I had caught. It was the be- 
ginning of the bout — only a feint by the rabbit, just to try the mettle of 
her antagonist. The cat was scared, and before he got himself together, 
Molly with a mighty bound was in the air again, and, as she flashed over 
him, she fetched him a stunning whack on the head that knocked him end- 
wise. He was on his feet in an instant, but just in time to receive a stinging 
blow on the ear that sent him sprawling several feet down the hill. The 
rabbit seemed constantly in the air. Back and forth, over and over the cat 
she fled, and with every bound landed a terrific kick with her powerful 
hind feet, that was followed by a puff of yellow fur. The cat could not 
stand up to this. Every particle of breath and fight was knocked out of 
him at about the third kick. The green light in his eyes was the light of 

412 



THE PORCUPINE GROUP 

terror. He got quickly to a bush and ran away, else I believe that the old 
rabbit would have beaten him to death." 

In addition to this familiar eastern cottontail we have in the 
United States several other species, as the little marsh hare 
and the big water hare of the southern states ; the large northern 
varying hare; the arctic hares; the various long-eared, long- 
legged "jack rabbits" of the Plains and Rocky Mountains, 
a particular account of which has been given by Palmer 73 ; 
and several lesser species, more or less common on the Pacific 
coast. The "varying hare" is so called because, as is the case 
with several foreign northern hares, its brown summer coat 
when shed as usual on the approach of winter is replaced by 
one which is white. The purpose and process of this change 
with the seasons has been explained elsewhere. 



Porcupines, Chinchillas, and Cavies 

This brings us to the suborder Simplicidentata or rodents 
with only one pair of upper incisors, which consists, as we have 
seen, of three groups: (i) porcupinelike; (2) ratlike; and 
(3) squirrel-like; but many members of each bear little out- 
ward resemblance to their types. 

The porcupines are stout-bodied animals, protected by an 
armor of stiff, sharp, quill-like spines. In the European 
species these are twelve or fifteen inches long in some places, 
and on the back are solid, but on the tail are hollow. When 
the creature is angry or trying to look dangerous, it lifts these 
spines until they stand out in all directions, shakes its tail to 
give a clicking noise, and perhaps makes an odd bayonet- 
charge backward, at which the enemy usually flees nem. con. 
A mane of long, whitish bristly hairs flows back from its fore- 
head. Several very similar species inhabit Asia and South 
Africa, and some others in the East Indies have long tails with 

413 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



a tuft of quills at the end, whose rattling, when the animal 
gets excited, recalls that of a rattlesnake. These Old World 
porcupines dwell in burrows of their own digging, or in con- 




Brownell, Phot. 



The North American or "Canada" Porcupine. 



venient and softly bedded hollows among rocks, whence they 
sally forth at night in search of edible roots, etc., and to damage 
gardens and fruit orchards ; they never climb trees, and hiber- 
nate in winter when they live in a cold country. 

Our American porcupines, on the contrary, are first-class 
climbers, and remain as much awake in cold weather as in 
warm, — which is no very high praise for their activity. They 
are further distinguished by the fact that the spines are shorter 

414 



PORCUPIXE TRAITS 

and are intermingled with hairs; the sole of the foot is rough 
and the toes are furnished with long claws, so that the paws 
are well fitted for holding to the branches of the trees in which 
our porcupines spend most of their time ; and in many the tail 
is prehensile. Lastly, the food is mainly bark and leaves. 

Our eastern porcupine (there is a similar far- western " yellow- 
haired" species) is numerous and well known wherever conif- 
erous forests remain and rough hills give it a safe place to 
make its den ; and it passes its time lazily browsing in the hem- 
locks, or at night in wandering about near its lair, picking up 
a variety of vegetable fare, and rejoicing in an occasional find 
of bones or cast antlers or the saline scraps of a lumber camp 
or a hunter's bivouac, which it enters with the fearlessness of 
innocence, and rummages without doing any great harm. It 
does not hibernate, resisting the cold as long as food holds out, 
and this is so simple and easily obtained that the animals have 
nothing to do but to go from one tree to another, which they 
are loath to do as long as a leaf remains. Under this lack of 
stimulus to exert themselves they have become as lethargic 
in mind as in body. In my "Wild Neighbors" 36 will be 
found a somewhat extended biography under the title "A 
Woodland Codger." 

The porcupine led our Indians to one of the most distinctive native 
American arts, that of ornamentation by its quills, — an art unknown in 
primitive Europe, but practiced all over North America, and 
often giving an exceedingly pretty effect. The quills were V 
sometimes drawn into, or sewed in patterns upon, garments, moccasins, 
robes, tobacco pouches, bow cases, and similar things made of buckskin 
or fur; were combined with feathers and beads in the ornamentation of 
war bonnets, pipes, and various ceremonial objects; were bent and woven 
into baskets, mattings, canoes, and many small articles formed of birch 
bark ; the short ones were strung like beads for fringes ; and in many other 
ways the quills were made to serve an artistic purpose. Usually, they were 
tastefully dyed with vegetable juices, since their own colors faded or were 
easily soaked out. These decorative designs cost much time and were the 

4i5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



"fancy work" of the squaws, who often exercised notable skill and taste, 
and produced thereby a truly native art. 

In Central and South America live a number of species of 
smaller and more thoroughly arboreal porcupines which have 
prehensile tails and otherwise differ from those of North Amer- 
ica; in one, the spines are little better than bristles. 

Associated with the porcupines anatomically, though very 
unlike them in form and mode of life, are the chinchillas, cavies, 
spiny rats, and some other little beasts which next 
demand attention. The chinchilla, whose delight- 
fully soft, silver-gray fur is so highly prized, is a small, long- 
eared, squirrel-like, nocturnal creature, living gregariously in 
the high Andes, where it follows the customs of the pikas, 
except that it often digs burrows for itself, and that its food is 
mainly roots. It is becoming rare. Another genus (Lagidium) 
are also mountain dwellers, but their fur is inferior. 

Closely allied to them are the viscachas or "bizcachas, " 



Chinchilla. 




Brazilian Tree Porcupine. 



Viscacha. 



as Darwin spells it, which have been so particularly described 
by Hudson, 35 and which take the place on the plains 
of Argentina of our prairie dogs, and are equally 

pestiferous. Formerly they were extremely numerous, but now 

416 



JJ\1VS OF THE VISC AC HA 



have been greatly reduced by the farmers whose rields they 
damage. Viscachas are grayish animals, about twenty inches 
in length, with black and white faces, and with much the form 
of rabbits except that the ears are short and the tail rather long 




:::- 



VlSCACHA. 



and bushy. They live in companies of twenty to thirty, and dig 
deep and complicated burrows, often branching and commu- 
nicating, and having large craterlike openings, around which 
the earth is soon bared of vegetation; and they have a habit 
of dragging on to these hillocks of cast-out earth not only the 
remains of their food, which consists of grass, roots, seeds, 
thistle stalks, etc., but any bright object near by, so that when 
a traveler loses a small article he at once searches the nearest 
viscachera. These hillocks are the homes of several birds 
— one a small ground owl, the coquimbo, which, like our 
burrowing owl, lays its eggs in some unused tunnel entrance 
or often excavates a little cave for itself ; another a small pas- 
serine bird, one of the wood hewers, which digs a nesting hole 
in the mound ; and the third a swallow, which breeds in aban- 
doned burrows, as also do sundry foxes, snakes, etc. These last 
2E 417 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

are enemies, but the viscachas are plucky in defending them- 
selves, and "will attempt to rescue their friends if attacked by 
a weasel or a peccary, and to disinter those covered up in their 
burrows by man." The under surface of the viscacha's up- 
curled tail is padded with a thick, naked, horny skin; "and 
when the animal performs the curious sportive antics in which 
it occasionally indulges, it gives rapid, loud- sounding blows on 
the ground with this part of the tail." The pelt is of no value, 
and the flesh is not well liked, though equal or superior to that 
of the hare. 

South America is the principal home of the porcupine group, 
and that it has always been so is shown by the abundance of 
their remains in the rocks there, carrying their history back 
far into the Tertiary period. The bones of one species, found 
in the Lower Pampas formations, indicate an animal closely 
related to the modern viscacha, but as big as an ox ! It is not 
surprising then to find many existing relatives in that conti- 
nent, — agoutis, pacas, capybaras, cavies, and so forth. 

One of the best known of these in former times, when it was 
extremely numerous all over Argentina, was the tall Patagonian 
cavy or mara, which Mr. Darwin called "aguti," 
and which had the singularity of not being noc- 
turnal, but of wandering and feeding by day, enjoying the 
hottest sunshine. The true agoutis, as we now use the term, 
are forest-loving animals ranging from the borders of the pam- 
pas northward. They are odd, golden-brown little creatures, 
with squirrel-like heads, high round haunches, a mere excuse 
for a tail, and slim legs with practically only three toes on the 
feet, and these armed with hooflike claws, so that, excepting 
its head, the agouti looks like a sleek little pig. 

"They are mainly nocturnal, remaining concealed during the day in 
hollow trees, or in cavities or burrows among their roots ; . . . Their move- 
ments are extremely active and graceful. When going slowly they advance 
at a kind of trot, but when running their pace takes the form of a series of 

418 




AGOUTIS AND PA CAS 

rapid springs which succeed one another so quickly as to give the appearance 
of a gallop. 'Cutias,' as these animals are called on the Amazons, can 
swim well, but are unable to dive. Their food consists of the foliage and 
roots of ferns and other plants, as well as fallen fruits ; their sharp incisor 
teeth enabling them to perforate the shells of the hardest nuts. In culti- 
vated districts they do much harm to plantations of sugar cane and plan- 
tains. Of their reproduction in a wild state, comparatively little is known. 
They breed, however, at least twice in the year. ... If captured at a suffi- 
ciently early age, agoutis can be 
readily tamed; and it is not 
uncommon in South American 
houses to find one or more 
of these animals roaming at 
large. . . . They are much 
hunted by the natives for the 
sake of their flesh." Thus far, 
Lydekker. 10 Turning to Rod- 
way," 8 we find him much pleased 
at the wily ways of this small 

strategist of the woods. "If chased," he tells us, "he will run along the 
shallows of a creek to hide his scent from the dogs, or swim over and 
back again several times for the same purpose. He never runs straight 
when pursued, but doubles, often hiding until a dog has passed, and 
then making off in a different direction. Like the fox, he has been 
hunted for a very long period; and, like Reynard, has grown wiser 
with even- generation." A smaller species, the aguchi, inhabits Central 
America and some of the West India Islands. 



One of the most prominent of the smaller Brazilian mammals, 
particularly in view of the fact that its flesh is excellent eating 
in a country where wild meat is scarce, is the paca, 

Pacas. 

a cousin of the agoutis and connecting their family 
with that of the cavies, presently to be introduced. Wallace 
and others declare its meat is the "very best the country pro- 
duces, being fat, delicate, and very tender," whereas agouti flesh 
is dry and tasteless. The habits of the pacas — there is a 
second smaller species in the uplands of Ecuador — are very 
like those of the agouti, that is, they are nocturnal and bur- 

419 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



rowers; but their appearance is very different, for they have 
five-toed paws on short, strong legs and the general shape and 
attitude of big, tailless woodchucks, richly brown in color and 
ornamented with rows of white spots. This beautiful pelt is 




The Capybara or Carpincho. 



Capybara. 



of no commercial value, however, on account of its thinness 
and the coarseness of the hair. 

The largest of all this group not only, but the biggest of 
existing rodents, is the capybara, carpincho, water hog or 
water haas, as it is locally and variously called, 
which reaches a length of four feet and a weight 
of one hundred pounds, and looks like a gigantic rough- coated 
guinea pig, as, in truth, it is. It is to be met with all over 
Brazil, the Guianas, and Uruguay, and not only forms the prin- 
cipal food of the jaguar and other large beasts of prey, but its 

420 



CAPYBARA AXD GUINEA PIGS 

veal-like flesh is well liked by both Indians and whites, who 
also kill it because of its depredations on their fields of sugar 
cane, plantains, etc. The capybaras are thoroughly aquatic 
in their habits, swimming wholly immersed except their faces, 
diving well, and having the trick of hiding for a long time 
among aquatic weeds with only their nostrils poked above 
the surface; their feet are hairless, partly webbed, and look 
more like a duck's than a mammal's. Darwin 77 and Bates 25 
describe them at length, and Aplin 89 has recorded their 
habits in Uruguay, where they are seen usually in small herds, 
and utter a curious grunting bark, or, when they are pleased, 
a queer little quavering warble, very pretty. They may be 
tamed. 

The capybara belongs to the cavy family, of which there are 
a dozen or so other kinds, — all small, gregarious, nocturnal 
animals, inhabiting open regions from the Andes of Peru to 
the plains of Patagonia, some always digging burrows in con- 
nected warrens, others sometimes doing so and again con- 
tenting themselves with natural hollows; while the small 
Brazilian rock cavy, or hoki, lives in crevices of rocks, where 
the Indians seek it eagerly for the pot. The most familiar one, 
probably, is the aperea of the La Plata Valley, whence, it 
used to be said, came our guinea pigs — which are not pigs 
and have nothing to do with Guinea or even with Guiana! 
It is now known that these amusing pets are a modified form 
of Cutler's cavy of Peru, which has black fur with the flanks 
and under parts brownish. This one was domesti- Guinea 
cated by the Peruvians before their conquest by Plgs- 
the Spaniards, and Pizarro's men sent live specimens to Spain. 
Since then the cavies have been bred by fanciers into many 
varieties of size, color, and character of coat; and books 
describe the show points of these pets, but do not explain 
who gave them the absurd name they bear. 11 "' It would be 
better to call them cavies. 

421 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



There remain to be mentioned within this suborder only 
an extensive family (Octodontidae) of "rats," many of large 
size, and nearly all burrowers or swimmers or both, agreeing 
in several peculiarities of structure, one of which is that spines 

or bristles are min- 
gled with the fur or 
else form a comblike 
appendage on the 
hind feet. The group 
belongs mainly to 
tropical America, but 
a few are African, 
prominently the big 
"cane rat," so de- 
structive to sugar 
plantations, yet of 
much importance as 
a food resource of 
the negro field-hands. 
Several of the American forms make some special claim 
upon our interest, as, for instance, the quaint hutias of Cuba 
and Jamaica, which are known nowhere else ; the noisy Argen- 
tine tuco-tuco, — a curious little creature with the habits of a 
mole and nearly as blind, eyes being of no service to it under- 
ground; and that big water rat called in Chile coypu, on 
the Argentine pampas quuiya, and in the fur 
trade nutria (Spanish for "otter"), because it 
furnishes a fur which became a substitute for beaver; and 
like that animal it was nearly exterminated before the fashion 
for wearing felted fur hats was changed (about 1825) to 
that for the silk "tile" of the present mode, giving both 
animals a respite. The coypu looks and behaves much like 
a muskrat, but has a round tail, and swims by means of 
webbed hind feet. 




The Coypu. 



Coypu. 



422 






THE DESER T J ERE OA S 

Mice, Rats, and Such Small Deer 

Now we come to an immense assemblage of small mammals, 
embracing more than one hundred genera and perhaps ten 
times as many species, which must be sketched very rapidly, 
although full of interest for the naturalist and often prominent 
in our daily life. This is the murine or myomorphic section 




A Jerboa, showing Tufted Tail. 

of the Rodentia, distinguished from the other suborders by cer- 
tain peculiarities of the skull, and by the circumstance, as- 
sociated with their speed and leaping powers, that the long 
bones (tibia and fibula) of the leg are united into a cannon 
bone; and containing the jerboas, rats, mice, lemmings, and 
their kin, whose fare is mainly vegetable, and which for safety 
and warmth dwell in holes, and go abroad by night rather than 
by day. 

Most of the species are very small, one of the largest being 
the Cape jumping-hare of South Africa, which looks like a rabbit 
wearing a big squirrel's tail. It is a burrowing, 
nocturnal, far-leaping animal of southern Africa, 
and is a cousin of the tiny, pug-nosed and comical jerboas of 
the desert country of northern Africa, Arabia, and central Asia. 
The accompanying sketch shows how they look ; the largest is 
no more than seven inches long, and the smallest scarcely half 
that, not counting the long balancing pole of a tail. All are 
softly fawn color, matching the sands over which they skip 

423 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

like birds in tremendous leaps, and at such a rate that a swift 
horse cannot overtake them. The pretty Egyptian jerboas, 
which are often tamed by the Arabs into the most charming 
of pets, have only three toes on the hind feet, but the larger 
number of species have five toes; for example, the big alag- 
daga, everywhere seen in Turkestan, and an important source 
of food to the Kirghiz of the Steppes. All the jerboas live in 
companies which unite to make a network of underground tun- 
nels as a permanent home. 

A very near relative of these is our North American jump- 
ing-mouse, but it dwells in the woods and fields, not in deserts, 
and is not gregarious. Late in summer this mouse weaves a 
globular ball of grass blades, and occupies it with his mate 
until cold weather approaches, when the pair find a deep 
cranny among rocks or dig a hole a little way into the ground, 
and there, in a snug bed of shredded bark, leaves, and so forth, 
go sound asleep with the first severe frost, and never wake up 
before May day. None of our mammals is so deep a winter 
sleeper. The several species are much alike in color, — dark 
along the back, reddish yellow on the flanks, and whitish 
underneath. 

In a neighboring family are grouped another lot of North 
American mice, — the agile, graceful pocket mice, kangaroo 
Kangaroo rats an< ^ their fellows, which abound in the arid 
Mice - Southwest. The kangaroo rats would surely at- 

tract an artist, if Seton is a good reporter. 

"Just the loveliest, daintiest, fawn-brown little creature that I had ever 
seen in fur — large beautiful eyes like a fawn's — No ! not like a fawn's, 
for no fawn that ever lived had such wonderfully innocent orbs of liquid 
brown, ears like thinnest shells of the sea, showing the pink veins' flood of 
life. His hind feet were large and strong; but his fore feet — his hands, I 
mean, were the tiniest of the tiny — pinky white, and rounded and dim- 
pled, just like a baby's, only whiter and smaller than the tip of baby's finger. 
His throat and breast were snowy white — however does he keep himself 
so sweetly clean in such a land of mud ! Down the outside of his brown 

424 



FAIRIES OF THE DESERT 

velvet knickerbockers was the cutest little silvery white stripe, just like that 
on a troopers breeches. His tail . . . was remarkably long, and was deco- 




A Kangaroo Rat. 



rated to match the breeches with two long white stripes and ended in a 
feather duster, which was very pretty, but rather overdone, I thought, until 
I found out that it was designed for several important purposes. 

''Soft as a shadow, swift as an arrow, dainty as thistle down, bright- 
eyed and beautiful, with a secret way to an underground world where he 
finds safety from his foes — my first impression was not so very far astray. 
I had surely found the Little Folk." 

These charming fairies of the desert are extraordinarily 
numerous and varied, and find abundant food in the seeds of 
grasses and weeds, and in sundry insects, which they gather 
and cany in their pouched cheeks during the night. By day 
they are hidden in a labyrinth of connected runways beneath 
some hillside, where a large colony dwell snugly all the year 
round, carefully closing the tunnel entrances with loose sand 
each morning to keep out both enemies and heat. Hence 
these most beautiful and lively of our mice are rarely seen or 
even trapped, for they are extremely wary. 

425 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Every one in the open western half of the United States and 

Canada is, however, familiar with their big relatives, the pocket 

gophers, so called because of their "pouches," and 

Gophers. ° r \- • • , i , i , „ . , 

also to distinguish them from the northern striped 
gophers," which are ground squirrels. They are about the 
size of large house rats, "of squat bunchy shape, with short 
thick limbs, a short tail, very small or rudimentary ears, small 
eyes, no appreciable neck, and thick blunt head." Like the 
pocket mice they possess capacious pouches in each side of the 
head, which are not connected with the interior of the mouth, but 
open only by wide vertical slits beside the jaw ; they are lined 
with fur, and in reality are deep infolds of the skin. Their 
loose inner walls meet behind the front teeth and prevent the 
dirt dislodged in tunneling from falling into the mouth and 
throat. These gophers are almost as completely subterranean 
as the mole, and their fore limbs, though not twisted and mis- 
shapen like the mole's, are broad and strong, and provided with 
long digging claws. 

In his monograph 81 upon the group, Dr. Merriam tells us 
that in working their way through the ground they use the 
strong, overhanging, grooved incisors as picks to loosen the 
soil, while the fore feet scratch and push the earth backward 
until a large quantity has been loosened ; the animal then turns 
around and pushes this back to an opening in the tunnel and 
out upon the surface, where a hillock is soon formed. In these 
runways the gophers trot backward as readily as forward ; 
and the naked ratlike tail is so sensitive to touch that it gives 
instant warning of anything wrong. The food consists prin- 
cipally of roots, tubers, and other hard vegetable substances, 
but grass and juicy plants are sometimes eaten. Thus the 
animals may be highly mischievous, destroying potatoes and 
root crops, gnawing off the roots of fruit trees, and spoiling much 
ground in fields of grain or fodder by making water channels. 
They are busy hoarders, carrying away to underground store- 

426 




WESTERN POCKET GOPHER 




FRANKLIN S SPERMOPMILE 

WESTERN GROUND SQUIRRELS 



SERVICE OF CHEEK POUCHES 

houses vastly more stuff than they consume. The one inhabit- 
ing the Gulf states, which the Georgians and Floridans call 
" salamander," is particularly injurious to orange orchards 
and sweet-potato plantations; and the Californian species are 
exceedingly destructive to fruit trees and vines. Another 
charge is that they spread the growth of certain troublesome 
weeds. On the credit side, their continual overturning of the 
loam, and accidental burial of much vegetable refuse, is a 
practical plowing and manuring of great utility in developing 
fertile soils. Many interesting details of the habits of all this 
group are related by Vernon Bailey in his account of Texas 
animals. 68 

In these operations they make constant use of their pouches, 
cutting the food into small pieces, and then by swift and dexterous 
motions with the fore feet packing 
it into the pouches, usually filling 
one before the other. They do not 
drink at all. The pouches are 
emptied by putting a paw behind 
each and squeezing the contents out. 
Thus stores are carried by the bag- 
ful to the big central chamber 

in which their tunnels concentrate, cheek Pouches. 

where the gopher is really "at 

home " with his mate, and where the young are reared on 
a bed of grass, leaves, etc. ; but pairs may be found together 
only in early spring. To their solitary mode of life, gophers 
probably owe the vicious pugnacity so characteristic of them. 
None seems to hibernate. Two or three young only are born 
annually; but this small rate of increase is balanced, as Bailey 
points out in his paper 82 on their habits, by the safety from 
enemies, storms, and other dangers gained by their mode of 
life. Thus the reddish prairie gopher (Geomys bursarius) re- 
mains exceedingly numerous and troublesome ?.U over the well- 

427 




THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 




Brownell, Phot. 



A House Mouse. 



settled prairie region; the salamander (Geomys tuza) in the 
southern states ; the smaller gray gopher (Thomomys talpoides) 
throughout the Northwest ; and a large number of other species 

southwest of these districts, 
in spite of great efforts 
made for their extermina- 
tion. 

Africa has some related 
forms, such as the big mole 
rats of the Cape of Good 
Hope. One of the most re- 
markable is the Egyptian 
spalax, which stores in closets 
along its complicated runways 
beneath the desert sand quan- 
tities of bulbs of a grape hya- 
cinth, and that only; so far as we can see the distribution, if not the 
existence, of the animal is dependent on this plant. Here, too, come the 
large edible bamboo rats of many kinds, familiar in India and eastward. 
The last, and several others, are good eating. 

This brings us to the populous family Muridae, or typical 
rats and mice, whose distinguishing marks are a long, nearly 
hairless or scaly tail, and naked soles. The genus 
Mus, which contains about one hundred and thirty 
species of "true " rats and mice, is confined exclusively to the 
Old World, and is absent there only from Madagascar. The 
type of the group is the house mouse, which probably originated 
in Asia. Its special characteristics are its relatively large ears, 
long tail, and the nearly uniform brownish coloration; but 
this last varies greatly in different countries and climates. 
Town mice, for instance, are always darker, especially on the 
under side, but fanciers have bred many pied and even pure 
white varieties. It has also been tamed and taught tricks. 
Quite as distinctive as its form and color are the partiality of 
this mouse for human habitations, and its omnivorous appetite ; 

428 



House 
Mouse. 



HISTORY OF THE HOUSE RAT 

wild mice often come into houses for a time, but desert them as 
soon as house mice arrive. Its bodily and mental activity are 
both noteworthy; it is as ingenious as it is curious, will leap 
long distances and run up vertical walls, so that it is extremely 
difficult to put things out of its reach. Its acuteness has been 
the theme of many anecdotes, and its attentiveness to musical 
sounds and ability to make them are well known. It is not 
surprising, then, that the mouse should figure largely in the folk- 
lore and fables of all peoples. 

Equally domesticated and even less welcome are the big 
gray brown, blunt-nosed rats of cellars, ships, warehouses, 
granaries, and grain fields all over the world. So 
completely have they allied themselves with man 
and his works that their primitive home is unknown, but is 
thought to be Mongolia. The advent of this rat in Europe, 
and its dispersion thence by shipping to all parts of the globe, 
are more recent than is generally assumed, since rats first be- 
came noticeable in southern Russia by migrating from the East 
in large numbers and swimming the Volga. The immigrants 
then spread rapidly over Europe, reaching London about 
1730, — "the only wild animal," remarks Boyd Dawkins, 83 
"which is known to have invaded Europe since the Pleistocene 
Age, with the exception, perhaps, of the true elk." 

Wherever it went it overcame and partly exterminated the smaller, more 
timid black house rat, now very scarce — itself a world-wide wanderer 
in the paths of commerce. The popular belief in Great Britain that the 
brown rat was introduced there in Norwegian timber ships, gives it the name 
"Norway rat"; at any rate, European ships carried it to all parts of the 
world. It reached our eastern ports in 1775 and was popularly credited 
to the hated Hessian soldiers, — a queer echo of the London idea that it 
came there with the Hanoverian train of the present reigning house. By 
1830 it had reached the Mississippi, and by 1857, at least, was numerous 
in California. 

Long previous (1554, according to Erxleben) the European black rat 
had established itself in the eastern states; and also (in the South) a white- 

429 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

bellied variety of it, native to Egypt and the Mediterranean shores, known 
as the Alexandrine rat, or "roof rat," which has never appeared north of 
the Carolinas. Baird thought it probable that the early Spanish discov- 
erers and conquerors carried this variety to America in their vessels, and 
thus introduced it on the continent long before the brown or even the black 
rat. An odd result of this ancient importation was that an idea got abroad, 
and into early books, that these black rats were indigenous American ani- 
mals which had emigrated to Europe. In America, as elsewhere, the big 
brown rat has beaten its earlier but weaker brethren in the competition for 
livelihood, and the latter has become scarce or has taken to the woods. 

This strong brown-coated invader succeeds by its adaptabil- 
ity to all climates and foods, its enormous fecundity, its quick- 
witted intelligence, and its willingness and ability to fight for 
whatever it wants to get or to keep. Its usefulness as a scaven- 
ger is a small offset to the vast evil it does as an agent of infec- 
tious diseases. To the rats of the East is largely due, for 
example, the epidemic spread of the bubonic plague, whose 
germs are carried in the filth frequently attached to their 
feet and fur. When this pest began to appear in Korea and 
Japan in 1 903-1 904, the Japanese authorities, who were about 
to put great armies into the field, and were preparing to pre- 
vent their decimation by camp diseases, caused the collection 
of all the rats the people could be hired to kill. Each corpse 
was examined for bubonic microbes, and when these were 
found it was destroyed. The result, aided by other means, 
was the extirpation of the plague in that part of the world; 
and the clean skins furnished ear tippets for every soldier 
campaigning in Manchuria. 

The true mice of this group are numerous throughout the 
world, and show many local peculiarities. One of the small- 
est and prettiest is the diminutive harvest mouse, 
weighing only a sixth of an ounce, and familiar in 
English grainfields, where its ball-like nest of woven grass 
blades is suspended near the tops of the stalks. It is often 
carried home with the harvest and remains in the barn or stacks 

430 



PLAGUES OF FIELD MICE 

all winter, but otherwise it digs a tiny tunnel and hibernates 
underground. A singular mouse of the desert region has so 
very spiny a fur that "when it has its spines erected it is al- 
most indistinguishable from a diminutive hedgehog." Another 
desert genus imitates the jerboa in form and habits; and the 
Barbary mouse is prettily striped. Peculiar genera are restricted 
to various African and Asiatic regions, or to single East Indian 
islands (bamboo rats) ; and Australia possesses several species 
— the only native mammals not marsupials except bats. One 
of them is the beaver- rat — a large dark brown species of 
Hydromys frequenting creeks like the European water rat, and 
having a beautifully soft, beaverlike skin. 

The water rats proper, the "voles" of the English, form a 
group with many representatives in the United States, and are 
of rather stout, clumsy build, with short ears and short hairy 
tails. The water rat and bank vole are familiar ones in Great 
Britain, dwelling in holes in every stream bank, and swimming 
in ponds, though their feet are not webbed. Another very 
small vole is the ordinary field mouse of Europe, which every 
few years, by reason of plentiful food and other favorable con- 
ditions, suddenly becomes excessively numerous in some region 
and appears as a "plague." Millions of these mice will dev- 
astate the local fields for a year or two, and then gradually, 
by enemies and disease or starvation, will fall away to their 
original numbers. In South Russia, Hungary, and similar 
countries, such plagues have sometimes caused extensive 
famines. The same thing has happened in Nova Scotia, and 
is liable to arise in our prairie states. 

To this group belong our short-tailed meadow or field mice, 
wood mice, pine mice, lemming mice, and muskrats. 

The meadow mice (genus Microtus) exist in many species 

and varieties all over the continent north of the Tropics. 
t 
"They live," says Miller, "in an endless variety of situations, from sea 

beaches to marshes and alpine mountain tops, and from open plains to 

43i 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the densest forests. They are perhaps most numerous in well-watered 
grass lands. In localities where they are abundant most of the species 
Meadow make their presence known by trails or runways traced 

Mouse. through the vegetation near their burrows. Occasionally, 

however, they occupy hollows in decaying logs or among loose rocks, and 
use natural crevices instead of beaten paths. While the great majority 

of the species spend 
much of their time on 
the surface, protected by 
the overhanging vegeta- 
tion, a few live al- 
most exclusively under 
ground, and in conse- 
quence of this habit 
have acquired numerous 
modifications which fit 
them for the needs of 
a subterranean life. 
Others are amphibious, 
and never occur at any 
great distance from 
water. At least one member of the subfamily is said to live among the 
branches of trees (Douglas spruce, in Oregon). The food is chiefly vege- 
table, though most species occasionally eat animal food. The vegetable 
food consists principally of grass stems, though roots, bark, leaves, seeds, 
and fruit are at times eaten in varying quantities. As voles are readily 
caught in traps baited with meat, it is probable that flesh forms part of 
their normal food. Mollusks are eaten freely when they can be obtained. 
"The voles and lemmings breed very rapidly during the warmer part 
of the year. The number of young in a litter varies from one or two to ten. 
. . . The young are born in nests made of soft vegetable fibers. The nests 
are usually placed in a burrow or beneath shelter of some kind, and vary 
with the size of the animals." 




Meadow Mouse. 



Every American book of natural history has much to say of 
these little creatures, one of the best accounts being that by 
Kennicott, 56 from whose writings, buried in the Smithsonian 
Reports, I have made somewhat extensive quotations on this 
subject elsewhere. 36 ' 94 See also the books of Audubon, Thoreau, 

432 



CANADIAN CUNNING-MICE 




Abbott, Sharp, Cram, and others. A small cousin of the 
common eastern meadow mouse plentiful in the woods and 
fields of the northwestern states is the red-backed mouse; 
the prairie region has a gray, harshly haired species; while 
the pine mouse is numerous in the South, and is the smallest, 
reddest, and most subterranean of its kind. 

Closely related to these are the lemmings of northern regions, 
which in general are larger, more thick-set animals, with power- 
ful digging feet, long, dense fur, and very short tails. 

In one (Dicrotonyx) of the American genera, the fore feet are strangely 
altered even* winter, apparently to fit them better for the incessant digging 
which must be done in moving about 
under the snow or soil, whereas in sum- 
mer this mouse spends most of its time 
above ground. The thumb of the fore 
foot is a mere tubercle, but the other 
toes are well developed and clawed, 
especially the two middle ones, and in 
summer are not at all remarkable. As 
winter comes on, however, a great horny 
pad forms underneath each of the two middle claws and remains there 
until spring, when it gradually loosens from the nail and sloughs off. 

These lemmings all live in high latitudes or among cold moun- 
tains, and hence are more given to the protection of underground 
houses and a long winter hibernation ; but their food Lem- 
and habits are not greatly different from those of min s s - 
their more southern relatives. Several related species exist in 
northern Canada, and like their arctic European brethren 
turn white in winter; but interesting is the true lemming of 
Scandinavia, whose celebrated migrations have never been 
satisfactorily explained, but are evidently similar to the 
"plagues" of mice alluded to above. 

The lemming is about three inches in length on the average, 
but is very variable in size and color, with a triangular, prettily 
striped face, scarcely visible ears and tail, and strong curved 
2F 433 



Winter Summer 

Padded Toes of Dicrotonyx. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

claws; and the beadlike eyes seem always to notice objects 
above them rather than those in any other direction. During 
the summer they form their nests under stones, and in winter 
push long galleries through the turf and under the snow in 
search of their vegetable food, since they lay up no stores. 

"In England," 
says Crotch, who 
contributed a 
most observing 
account of the 
animal to The 
Popular Science 
Review, new se- 
ries, Volume I, 
page 143, "we 
fail to perceive 
how much active 
life goes on be- 
neath the snow, 
which in more 
northern latitudes 
forms a warm 
roof to numerous 

NORWEGIAN LEMMINGS. ^^ quadrupeds 

and land insects, which are thus enabled to secure an otherwise 
impossible sustenance. At the same time ... a fearful struggle 
for existence is carried on during the long autumnal nights 
before the snow has become a protection rather than a new 
source of danger to all save predaceous animals." 

At intervals, averaging about a dozen years apart, lemmings 
suddenly appear in cultivated districts in central Norway and 
Sweden, where ordinarily none live, and in a year or two mul- 
tiply into hordes which go traveling straight west toward the 
Atlantic, or east toward the Gulf of Bothnia, as the case may 

434 




LEMMING MIGRA TIONS 

be, regardless of how the valleys trend, climbing a mountain 
instead of going around it, and, undeterred by any river or lake 
keep persistently onward until finally some survivors reach 
the sea, into which they plunge and perish. The Norwegian 
peasants have many superstitions relating to these migrations, 
and will assure you that the lemmings rain down. Almost as 
illogical is the theory formerly held by the learned that these 
movements are prompted by an ancient instinct which forces 
the animals to seek, at times, a mythical land of plenty, — an 
Atlantis, — now submerged in the ocean, whence their ances- 
tors came ages ago. It is more rational to suppose that under 
specially favorable conditions the lemmings multiply so fast 
that their natural habitat in the high central moun- 

Lem- 

tains fails to supply sufficient food, and thus a move- ming Mi- 
ment outward from that center begins. As the lem- 
mings reach cultivated ground, the abundance of food and a 
warmer climate lead to a marked increase, and as the females 
when only six months old bear young, and then produce several 
litters annually, their number soon becomes countless, and the 
swarm must spread. This leaves unaccounted for their in- 
veterate attempt to reach the sea. It is plain that the ancient 
notion that they go under a mysterious impulse to commit 
suicide, is absurd. Their impulse is simply to keep going, — 
why always straight east or west, we cannot say; probably 
simply because the valleys and dip of the land is in that direc- 
tion. Certainly there is no reason to believe that they know 
or care anything about the ocean at all ; and the truth prob- 
ably is, that when they come to the strand they enter the water 
with no idea of its breadth or depth. 

"They descend from the Kolen [Mountains], marching in parallel lines 
three feet apart; they traverse Nordland and Finmark, cross lakes and 
rivers, and gnaw through hay and corn stacks rather than go round. They 
infect the ground, and the cattle perish which taste of the grass they have 
touched; nothing stops them, neither fire, torrents, lakes, nor morasses. 

435 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

The greatest rock gives them but a slight check; they go round it, and 
then resume their march directly without the least division. , If they meet 
a peasant they persist in their course, and jump as high as his knees in de- 
fense of their progress. They are so fierce as to lay hold of a stick and suffer 
themselves to be swung about before they quit their hold. If struck they 
turn about and bite, and will make a noise like a dog. Foxes, lynxes, and 
ermines follow them in great numbers, and at length they perish, either 
through want of food, or by destroying one another, or in some great water 
or in the sea. They are the dread of the country, and in former times 
spiritual weapons were exerted against them; the priest exorcised them, 
and had a long form of prayer to arrest the evil." So wrote Thomas 
Pennant, 174 more than a century ago; and it forms a vivid illustration 
of the way in which rodents would devastate the earth were it not for the 
constant repression exercised by their natural enemies the carnivores. 
Scandinavia suffers most because that peninsula has comparatively 
few flesh-eating animals to police her valleys. Mr. Crotch supplies an 
interesting detail, showing how unfit these little animals are to endure their 
ill-considered journeys: "On calm mornings my lake, which is a mile in 
width, was often thickly studded with swimming lemmings, every head 
pointed westward, . . . and never did frailer barks tempt a more treacherous 
sea, as the wind swept daily down the valley, and wrecked all who were 
then afloat. It was impossible not to feel pity for these self-haunted fugi- 
tives. A mere cloud passing over the sun affrighted them; the approach 
of horse, cow, dog, or man alike roused their impotent anger, and their 
little bodies were convulsively pressed against the never failing stone of 
vantage whilst they uttered cries of rage." 

The American muskrat is only a big vole, adapted to a 

thoroughly aquatic career, but is one of the most celebrated 

and noteworthy of our quadrupeds; it is to be met 

Muskrat. . t , , J , , H T *\ ' , . , . . 

with throughout the whole continent, to which it is 
peculiar, but not south of Arizona. That of Newfoundland 
and the muskrat of the Dismal Swamp, in Virginia, are called 
distinct species by the specialists. 

Although so widely distributed and abundant, the muskrat 
is not often seen, as it is mainly nocturnal in its habits, and 
during the day remains in its burrow or house especially when 
it fears it will be observed. Its home either is built' of sticks, 

436 



HOME LIFE OF THE MUSKRAT 




mud, and grass, and forms a heap the size and appearance of a 

small haycock, or else is dug out of the bank of a stream or pond 

as a burrow, the entrance to which is under water. Where 

there is an extensive swamp, or stretch of shallow water, so 

that the houses will not be ordinarily exposed to wandering 

enemies, muskrats 

seem to prefer 

them ; but where 

they live in or 

about a narrow 

stream, with little 

swamp, the bank 

burrow is the 

usual shelter. This 

is sometimes only 

a few feet in 

length, and often 

has a concealed 

land entrance as 

well as a subaqueous one. The houses are always entered 

through the basement from water deep enough not to freeze to 

the bottom in winter; and are usually swept away by the spring 

freshets, so that a new one must be erected each autumn. 

The muskrat is omnivorous, eating roots (especially of the 
pond lily), fruits, vegetables, insects, worms, mollusks, etc., 
and is especially fond of sweet corn and apples, in search of 
which it often wanders far from its home, and finds its way 
occasionally into barns and cellars. In some localities fresh- 
water mussels are a favorite article of food, and large 
heaps of the empty shells are sometimes found near musk- 
rat burrows, due to their preference for dining day after 
day in the same place. In some places, and irregularly, 
probably, they store up in their habitations considerable 
quantities of apples, lily roots and similar provender. 

437 



Brownell, I'hot. 



The American Muskrat. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



The body of the muskrat is about a foot long, and the tail eight inches. 
The animal is rather stout and thick set, the head is rounded, and the ears 
are small and close. The front feet are rather small, while the hind feet are 
stout, with five partially webbed toes, well fitted for swimming, yet the 

sculling movement of 
the much-compressed 
tail is the principal 
means of progress in 
the water. The pelage 
consists, as is usual 
with aquatic mam- 
mals, of an under coat 
of dense soft fur and 
an outer coat on the 
back and sides, chiefly 
of long, dark, shining, 
smooth hairs which 
are pulled out when 
the pelt is dressed. So 
much air is held by 
these outer hairs that 
in ordinary excursions 
the under fur is hardly 
wetted. The color 




Brownell, Phot. 
A MUSKRAT'S DlNING-TABLE. 

Showing an accumulation of mussel shells (Unio),the 
remains of many meals. 



above is dark umber brown, darkest on the middle of the back and on 
the tail, while beneath the prevailing shade is gray. The musky odor 
from which the animal gets its name is due to the secretion of a large gland 
between the thighs, which is present in both sexes; and to similar secretion, 
excessive in amount, is due the name "muskrat" applied in India to a very 
different animal, — a large shrew (Crocidura). 

The flesh of the muskrat is good eating and was formerly much used 
by the Indians; and the skins form an important item in the fur trade. 
Hence muskrats are extensively trapped, chiefly in the winter, by setting 
small steel traps at the entrance to their houses or burrows or in runways 
where they come ashore, and hundreds of thousands are killed annually. 
Their numbers nevertheless do not decrease, partly because their natural 
enemies are now fewer, but chiefly because of the fact that the making of 
slack -water spaces, by damming rivers and the digging of canals (whose 
banks they seriously damage), have greatly extended waters suitable for 
them in various parts of the country. 

438 



MISCHIEVOUS WOOD RATS 

Another housebuilder is the wood rat, of which one sort is not 
uncommon in the woods of the Appalachian region, another on 
the Gulf coast, and others in the Rocky Mountains. 
About the size of house rats, their hairy tails, larger 
ears, thick, soft fur, and redder tinge sufficiently distinguish 
them. They live in wild places and gather masses of sticks, 
shredded bark, and other stuff into a nest often of considerable 
size and shapeliness; and Western men call them pack rats. 

"These animals," Hornaday tells us, "are nocturnal, and their nest- 
building and other work is done at night. The most remarkable thing 
about them is their habit of entering houses and playing practical jokes upon 
the inmates. A pair of wood rats that I knew by reputation at Oak Lodge, 
in Florida, first carried a lot of watermelon seeds from the ground floor 
upstairs and hid them under a pillow. Then they took from the kitchen a 
tablespoonful of cucumber seeds and placed them in the pocket of a vest 
which hung upstairs on a nail. In one night they removed from a box 
eighty -five pieces of beehive fixtures, and hid them in another box, and on 
the following night they deposited in the first box about two quarts of corn 
and oats. Western frontiersmen and others who live in the land of the 
wood rat relate stories innumerable of the absurd but industrious doings 
of these strange creatures." 

The bushy tailed pack rat, in particular, makes the acquaint- 
ance of every settler and is quick to adapt the conveniences of 
cabin or barn, or a roadside mail box, to his ideas of comfort. 
He is not altogether welcome, however, for he is rather too 
frequent and bold in his visits to house and pantry, stealing 
and dragging to his own stores all sorts of small articles, as well 
as a great accumulation of grain, fruit, leaves, and the like, 
little of which he really needs. But otherwise he is a harmless 
little creature, as pretty, cleanly, and lively as a squirrel. This 
species occurs from Utah to the Yukon Valley ; other species 
range southward into Mexico. 

This wood rat is a large edition of that exquisite little wan- 
derer, the white-footed mouse, the many species of which 
compose the genus Peromyscus, and form a charming band, 

439 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



White- 
foot 
Mouse 



peculiarly North American. They are the graceful, large-eared 
1 'deer" mice of our woodlands often seen about country houses, 
and are richly fawn-color above, with pure white 
under parts and feet. The common whitefoot is ac- 
tive, agile, hardy, and has as miscellaneous a bill of 
fare as a red squirrel, eating all sorts of seeds, thin-shelled nuts, 
berries, small fruits, insects, and scraps of flesh and bone. These 
mice are largely responsible for the disappearance of cast horns 

of deer, and of 
animal skele- 
tons left in the 
woods. "Like 
squirrels," re- 
marks Cram, 52 
of New Eng- 
land examples, 
"they often 
find a way into 
granaries and 
Eastern White-footed Wood Mouse. farmhouses in 

search of food, particularly in the winter, when times are 
hard; for though they lay up generous stores of nuts and 
seeds, and hibernate to a certain extent, large numbers of 
them are up and doing at all times in spite of the weather." 
Elliot's " Synopsis " recorded in 1901 no less than forty-two 
alleged species in North America ; and several other populous 
genera are closely allied. Related mice well known in the 
South are the cotton rat and rice-field mouse, while the 
American harvest mice are widespread in the West. In the 
Old World occur the large and interesting hamsters (Cricetus) 
whose skins make pretty robes, etc. ; and in South America 
the extraordinary, aquatic, fish-eating rats of the genus Icthyo- 
mys, recalling the Australian beaver rats. 

Africa possesses many exclusive groups and genera, of which 

440 




WEBBERS, GERBILLES, AND DORMICE 




ShepheardWalwj-n, Phot. 

A Hibernating Dormouse. 



only a few can be noted. One of the most unusual is the large 
webber or crested rat of the eastern half of that continent, 
whose long harsh hair forms a roach of bristles on the back and 
tail, so that the animal resembles a miniature porcupine. We 
know little of its habits ex- 
cept that in Arabia it sits 
upon its haunches and 
whistles, and climbs wild 
date palms to feed on the 
fruit. The deserts of Af- 
rica and Arabia are also 
the home of gerbilles of 
many species — small mice 
with jerboalike appearance 
and habits. 

So distinct from the fore- 
going rats and mice as to 
constitute a separate family 
are the dormice, which in some of their many forms are 
found in Africa, Asia, and Europe, but not in America. Typi- 
cal of the group is the European dormouse, which is much like 
our whitefoot in habits and food, but is more nocturnal and 
looks like a miniature squirrel. An English correspondent, 
Mr. H. W. Shepheard-Walwyn, favors me with the following 
notes on this celebrated sleeper: — 

" This quaint little animal spends some six months of the year wrapped 
in a profound sleep. Motionless — save for the rhythmical heaving of the 
furry body as it draws its deep, long breaths — the sleeper is by no means 
silent, inasmuch as its wee nostrils emit a terrific snoring, which can even 
be heard across a fair-sized room. The specimen here depicted included 
a small but shrill note in its somnolent wheeze, and the noise which it 
produced by this means was really tremendous, considering the diminutive 
size of the animal. Cold to the touch, and apparently lifeless, the little 
yellow body might, to all intents and purposes, be that of a cold-blooded 
animal; and it has even been rolled about the room without attempting 

441 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

to uncurl its tightly folded form or evincing the faintest signs of returning 
animation. Naught but the voice of summer — barring such artificial 
methods as exposure to a hot fire — will open again the great, pathetic 
eyes, for all the world like a couple of black boot-buttons, or rouse into 
being the active life which lies dormant within the sluggish limbs." 



Squirrels, Scaletails, Prairie Dogs, Woodchucks, and 

Beavers 



curious, full of 
noisy, irascible, 



In this third company of the rodents we shall find many 
familiar and engaging friends, — none more so than the squir- 
rels, — agile, graceful, alert, 
business, 
'fat and 
sassy," rinding their home 
in the trees, under the 
double umbrage of the fo- 
liage and their own shady 
tails. These long, bushy 
tails, curving so gracefully 
over the back, forming so 
warm a blanket when 
wrapped about the sleeping 
owner, and always so ex- 
pressive, are the badge and 
pride of the tribe. In 
color, squirrels range from 
gray, with black varieties 
frequent, through various 
browns and foxy reds to the deep chestnut or orange markings 
of some Oriental and Mexican beauties ; and in general are so 
variable that too eager naturalists have been misled into giving 
specific names to hundreds of mere varieties. Even now no less 
than ten geographic races of our red squirrel alone are recognized. 

442 




Brownell, Phot. 

Saucy Red Squirrel. 



SQUIRREL TRAITS 



This common species illustrates the contrast between sum- 
mer and winter coloration prevalent in this family. In summer 
the red squirrels are truly foxy red all over the upper parts, and 
snowy white on the under surfaces, with only a faint suggestion 
of a dark line along the side separating the two color areas; 
but this is replaced in winter by a new coat of yellowish gray, 
divided from the dull white 
of the belly by a prominent ^*^ 
black band, and only along 
the spine is there any red- 
ness. The young, usually 
born in April, are reddish, 
and the black side band is 
strongly marked. Squir- 
rels seem also peculiarly 
sensitive to climatic influ- 
ences, especially of exces- 
sive dryness or moisture, as 
affecting both their colors 
and form. 

Squirrels inhabit hollows 
in trunks of trees or among their roots, make globular 
summer nests of leafy twigs on lofty branches, and bear 
once a year about four young, which remain with the 
mother until the ensuing autumn or spring. Nuts form their 
staple food, but berries, fruits, roots, funguses, insect-grubs, 
etc., offer changes in fare with the recurring seasons. Sometimes 
great ingenuity is displayed in getting at this food ; for instance, 
the black-tailed northwestern variety of the red squirrel called 
Richardson's, feeds almost exclusively on the seeds of pine and 
fir, especially the whitebark. 

"The scales of the cones are very thick, and are firmly glued together 
instead of being separate as usual among conifers. To reach the seeds the 
squirrel gnaws a hole in one side of the cone by means of which he extracts 

443 




European Common Squirrel. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

all of the seeds, just as our eastern squirrels obtain the meats of the larger 
nuts. . . . Squirrels ordinarily reach the seeds of conifers by stripping 
off the scales from the cones." 113 

Carnivorous tastes prevail among them, and trappers are 
constantly annoyed by these little meddlers springing the traps 
baited with flesh for martens and the like. Some species are 
arrant robbers of birds' nests, and now and then kill and eat 
small birds and mammals; and the older males are resolutely 
kept away from their babies by the mothers for fear of their 
teeth. This catholic appetite, and their willingness to wander 
from place to place in search of things seasonable, enable squir- 
rels to find food of some sort every month of the year, yet most 
species have the forethought to lay up in more or less secret 
places a winter supply of provender; consequently no species 
(of Sciurus) hibernates, strictly speaking. Their pretty way 
of sitting up on their great haunches and holding a nut in the 
fore paws while they cut through its shell, is characteristic of 
the tribe. Their fur, especially of the big Siberian species, is 
an important article in commerce; and their flesh is eaten 
largely in all of the colder countries. 

Any detailed account of our eastern squirrels is needless, 
but some western species are less well known. Familiar in 
Western California and Oregon is the sprightly Douglas 
Squirrels. squirrel, in summer olive-brown with orange breast 
and feet ; there is a black lateral line, and the tail is reddish 
black above, fringed and lined with orange. In the Rocky 
Mountains lives Fremont's squirrel, which is mainly yellowish 
gray. A large tufted-eared relative of the Southwest is Abert's, 
found only in the lofty pine forests, the behavior of which has 
been portrayed by Dr. Merriam m : — 

"It is common everywhere in the pines, and is particularly fond of the 
large seeds of Pinus flexilis. ... It builds large covered nests of green pine 
branches, but also avails itself of holes in trunks. . . . On reaching the tree 
of its choice, it climbs to the very top and then, unlike any other squirrel 

444 



GAY TROPICAL SQUIRRELS 



with which I am familiar, crawls out to the small end of a branch about 
which it curls and remains motionless, When in this position it is exceed- 
ingly difficult to see, though considerably larger than our eastern gray 
squirrel; and even the white under side of the bushy tail is so coiled about 
the body as to aid in deceiving the 
observer. The long and handsome ear- 
tufts are shed in the spring, and the 
new ones do not attain their full growth 
until the early part of winter; hence 
specimens taken in summer have naked, 
or nearly naked, ears." 

Mexico and Central America 
have several species of their own, 
mostly brightly colored — none 
more so than the gray-backed, 
red-bellied one common in the 
mountains of eastern Mexico. 
Hornaday thinks, however, that 
the most attractive squirrel in the 
world is Prevost's of the Malay 
Peninsula, whose "colors form a 
beautiful pattern of gray, brown, 
black, white, and buff." Another 
of very striking coloration, — above bright chestnut brown with 
sides and abdomen yellow, — and the largest of its race, is the 
Malabar squirrel, inhabiting the hills of southern India. The 
common squirrel of England (and eastward to Japan) is nearly 
like our red squirrel in appearance with the important differ- 
ence that its ears are heightened by a long fringe and pencil 
tip of stiff hairs. 

The flying-squirrels form an allied arboreal group, in which 
the furry hide is extended in a loose flap or cloak to the feet, 
and, in various Oriental species, also from the wrists to the 
neck, and from the ankles to the base of the tail. 

This expansion forms a sort of parachute, or "patagium," 

445 




Malabar Squirrel. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



*^^'- i ^^^^^tk p^^^^l 






**■■ ri mBB 


i ^ s '^8fe^ • " 





Fisher, Phot. 



American Flying-squirrel. 



sustaining the creature in the air when he spreads his limbs and 
makes his long leaps. We call it flight, but "sailing" is a more 
exact word, because there is no power of accelerating the speed, 
and little of changing direction; hence these animals may 
properly be regarded as offshoots of a wingless stock, which have 
developed the skin expansions as an aid in leaping, until now 

the smaller species 
will glide one hun- 
dred feet or so from 
some high limb to 
a lower one in 
another tree, and 
the big East In- 
dian round-tailed 
ones much farther. 
A recent discovery 
is that among the 
cliffs of the high 
western Himalayas lives a woolly flying-squirrel eighteen 
inches long, exclusive of the tail; and it was first described 
from a skin long used as a robe in a baby's perambulator 
at Simla ! 

There is to be found in Africa, only, a flying-squirrel so differ- 
ent in structure and relationships that it is held to represent a 
Anoma- separate order by some zoologists, — the anomalurus 
lurus. or " sca ietail." Externally it looks much like an ordi- 

nary one; but its dentition is different, the cartilaginous support of 
the patagium extends from the elbow instead of from the wrist ; 
and especially the under base of the tail is coated with a series 
of stiff, overlapping scales thought to be helpful in climbing. 
More lately a similar African animal has been discovered, 
peculiar in having almost no patagium, and considered by 
Lydekker 65 as representing the ancestral form from which 
sprang these queer imitators of our northern type. 

446 



HABITS OF FLY1XG-SQITRRELS 



Our own flying-squirrels are scattered all over North America 
south of Hudson Bay, and are numerous, but so secretive and 
nocturnal as to be rarely seen. They lodge in piying- 
holes and crannies of decaying tree trunks, — squirrel, 
often in old woodpecker nests, — where they make warm beds 
of soft materials, including much of their own shed fur. Fre- 
quently they come into the garrets of houses built near woods, 
and are likely to gather 
into communities. Their 
food is the smaller sorts of 
nuts and berries, together 
with many insects, and they 
have a strong taste for meat, 
catching and killing birds 
and robbing their nests. 
Whether or not they hiber- 
nate seems to be determined 
in each case (or with many 
other animals) by the cir- 
cumstances as to a winter 
supply of food. At any rate, 

while the smaller, more southerly, variety seems usually to sleep 
in winter, even where the climate is not excessively cold, those of 
Canada and the Adirondacks will remain active throughout the 
much colder winter whenever they live in forests yielding beech- 
nuts and similar provender in plenty. They are almost the softest, 
" cutest" animals in creation; have too little intelligence to show 
much fear of man, often, indeed, seeking his hospitality; 
cuddle in one's pocket or bosom with loving content; and 
exhibit the most charming activity in a spacious cage, or when 
turned loose in a room in the evening. Nevertheless, they are 
likely to be mischievous and destructive unless kept well under 
control. Entertaining accounts of their tricks and manners 
wild and tame have been written by Audubon, 90 Kennicott, 56 

447 




Flying-squirrel at Home. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

Merriam, 48 Cram, 100 and in The American Naturalist for 1873 
and 1883. 

The ground squirrels are members of a group of genera well 
represented in all countries, which dwell in burrows in the 
ground instead of in holes or nests in trees, and have 
acquired a trimness of form, slenderness or brevity 
of tail, and other traits, such as small close ears and eyes, strong 
claws and teeth, cheek pouches, etc., adapted to their career 
as miners. Our lively chipmunks and spermophiles, and the 



Chip- 
munk. 




Common Eastern Chipmunk. 



similar susliks of Russia, are good examples. Africa abounds 
in ground squirrels (genus Xerus), having a fur so harsh that in 
some species real spines are scattered among the hairs. All 
dig elaborate tunnels in the soil, in which to breed in summer 
and secrete themselves in winter, and make extensive stores of 
imperishable food upon which to subsist, hidden but not hiber- 
nating, during the months when the woods are bare and the 
ground is frozen and snowy. Thus protected from enemies 
and from famine, they are able to survive numerously even 

448 



PROBLEMS OF WINTER 

in the midst of civilization, and provide a constant supply of 
flesh for carnivorous mammals, birds, and reptiles. 

The storing of winter provender is a feature of animal economy 
well worth consideration. It has been forced upon small ani- 
mals wherever the climate, either by reason of cold, Problems 
snowy winters or very hot, dry summers, causes an of Winter - 
annual failure of the food supply for a time. A moment's 
thought will show how, by the falling of the leaves, the drying 
of bark, the death of green herbage, and the hardening and 
burial of land and water under ice and snow, a northern winter 
cuts off more or less completely all means of making a living 
from most of the smaller rodents and from various other animals. 
If regions with such a climate are to retain their animals, some 
extraordinary means must be found for avoiding or enduring this 
season. The insects die, but leave inert larvae to revive in the 
ensuing spring and so continue the race. Many of the lower 
animals, as snails, reptiles, etc., go into the ground or the mud 
of swamps and ponds and rest in a more or less torpid condition. 
Fishes and the aquatic life generally seek the deeper parts of 
their home waters, and exist beneath the ice, or go down to lake 
or sea. Most of the insect-eating birds migrate to southern 
regions, where food is constantly procurable. 

None of these methods is wholly available to the nervous, 
warm-blooded mammals, which, unless they have acquired a 
strength, hardihood, and breadth of taste which belong to only 
a few of the rodents, must either be able to go into the cold- 
trance of hibernation or else save enough from their plenty of 
autumn to keep them alive during the following months of 
famine. The same difficulty arises from opposite causes in 
deserts, where the excessive drought and heat of midsummer 
destroy the food of some mammals so completely that they 
must go into a heat trance (estivation) or else, like the mole 
rat, must stock their burrows with enough bulbs or other proper 
edibles to last them until the next rains begin. 

2G 449 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

I have never seen any explanation of this foresighted habit, 
but it must have arisen in such a way as this : It is the natural 
^ . . , custom of most ground- keeping animals not mere 

Origin of b r # ° 

Foodstor- grazers to take as much of their food as they well 
can to some favorite eating place. This practice is 
observable in a wide range of creatures, and is prompted by 
various motives, of which the strongest, no doubt, is the desire 
for security from robbers and enemies; also in some cases the 
sharing of the meal with their family. Now. one of the foremost 
characteristics of animal conduct is the desire to do things by 
rule, — to go accustomed rounds and repeat acts and operations 
in precisely the same way. Hence the habit of seeking the same 
place for a regularly recurring purpose, like eating, will be 
quickly confirmed, especially in such animals as these rodents, 
which have acquired the ability and practice of making and 
living in permanent burrows or houses. They are feebly en- 
dowed with powers either for defense or for escape outside their 
homes, and when gathering their food must not loiter much to 
eat as they go, but must pick up what they can carry and hasten 
to the safety of their doorways. This is the reason why surviv- 
ing species of such animals have acquired cheek pouches, in 
which th£y can transport a fair meal of their food to be eaten 
at home at leisure. 

During the larger part of the year food is scant, and these 
rodents get into the way of picking up every bit they can find, 
and some seem so restless and energetic that they bring to their 
homes quantities of things not edible, as we have seen in the 
account of the viscacha. Similar instances of a habit of accu- 
mulating stuff, edible and otherwise, may be found among birds 
of the crow tribe and elsewhere, but it has not been developed 
among them beyond the careless, accidental stage which makes 
the action miserly rather than thrifty. In the case of our 
store-saving mice, hamsters, beavers, and their ilk, however, 
necessity and advantage together have led to a far more advanced 

45° 




•*^£ ,. Thifpfo 






The Gray Squirrel. 



45 ] 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

development of the habit, until finally it has crystallized into 
an instinct of self-preservation. 

The process of acquirement may have been something like 
this: Remembering that the search for food is the foremost 
anxiety and occupation of these little creatures, it would be 
increasingly stimulated as the ripening season of the seeds and 
nuts on which they depend advanced, and the impulse to in- 
cessant industry, so necessary in the poorer parts of the year, 
would now be overworked, and each animal, in his haste to be 
up and doing, would constantly bring home more food than 
would be consumed, so that it would pile up in the accustomed 
" dining room." The gradual failure of outdoor supplies, as 
winter came on, would lead to the eating, with increasing fre- 
quency, of those fragments casually saved in and about the 
burrow or house, which, from their nature, would not have 
decayed. The animal which had been most busy and clever in 
food gathering would own the largest amount of the leavings 
of these autumnal feasts. Having the most food he would be 
among those of the colony or neighborhood strongest and most 
likely to survive, and to give to his offspring the tendency to 
strength and industry which had been his salvation. This 
would be continued and shaped by the process of natural 
selection into a valuable, instinctive habit of gathering food in 
large quantities as winter provender. 

Another noticeable point in the habits of these miners is this : Although 
often the very image of nervous activity, these and other burrowing animals 
shut themselves for long periods into almost air-tight apartments under 
ground, and yet seem to suffer no harm; but it is possible the scarcity of 
oxygen, or, rather, the accumulation of carbonic elements, may aid in in- 
ducing the trance of hibernation, to be considered when we come to the 
marmots. 

As to the ways of the chipmunks (ground squirrels of the 
genus Tamias), and of the "gray gophers" or prairie ground 
squirrels (genus Spermophilus) of the western plains, one can- 

45 2 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHIPMUNKS 



not speak .here in much detail. Our literature 103 abounds in 
accounts of them, and every one may easily learn their ways for 
himself by a little useful observation, since there is no lack of 
specimens. As our eastern chipmunk is the genius 
of the rail fences and stone walls that bound the Ground 
country lanes, so is his four-striped western brother qUUTe S * 
of the woods and thickets of the Rocky Mountains. The 
moment one camps anywhere these delightful little visitors 
will introduce themselves with an air as chipper as their voice, 
and become as entertain- 
ing as they are saucy. 
Many's the night I have 
had them dancing all over 
me as I lay rolled in my 
blankets under the tall 
yellow pines of the mid- 
land, or the spruces of the 
higher mountain shoul- 
ders ; or have been awak- 
ened as they dashed across 
my face by the soft prick- 
ing of tiny toe nails. Simi- 
larly in California and 
Oregon (where, according to Merriam and his hair-splitting 
school of systemists, there is a different "species" in almost 
every line of hills), the vagabond camper is investigated with 
friendly impudence not only by many kinds of chipmunks and 
pine squirrels, but by the lovely golden-backed spermophile. 

"In camp," writes an explorer of Mt. Shasta, "they made frequent 
visits to the mess box, which they clearly regarded as public property, ap- 
proaching it boldly and without suspicion, and showing no concern at our 
presence — in marked contrast to the golden -mantled squirrels, which 
approached silently, stealthily, and by a circuitous route, in constant fear 
of detention. If disturbed while stuffing their cheek pouches with bits of 
bread, pancake, or other eatables, each chipmunk usually seized a large 

453 




Carlin, Phot. 

Western Ground Squirrel. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

piece in its mouth and scampered off, returning as soon as we withdrew. 
In fact, they made themselves perfectly at home in camp." 

All the large Plains gophers (spermophiles) are gregarious, 
and dig extensive burrows so that they are a serious pest to 
both cultivators and grazers, and must be dealt with by poison- 
ing or otherwise. Their most complete biographies have been 
written by Coues 106 and by Bailey. 68, 1U - 

Closely related to the ground squirrels are the prairie dogs, — 
a name given by the early French explorers and trappers of 
Prairie tne West, more from their cheerful, puppylike 

Do s- actions, I suspect, than from their cry, which could 

hardly be called "barking"; yet Lewis and Clark, who first 
described the animal formally, called it "barking squirrel." 
It is a denizen of the dry plains east of the Rockies, while two 
or three other species inhabit the mountains, the Utah basin, 
and southward into Mexico. This animal is sometimes con- 
fused towards the north with the larger gray gophers, especially 
the Columbian and Franklin's, so that we wrongly hear of 
"prairie dogs" on the Canadian plains; it is to be distinguished 
by its slightly larger size, distinctly brownish color, and very 
short tail (two inches), which is flat and black toward the end. 

The prairie dog is about a foot long, and robust, with 
strong limbs and claws. It dwells in colonies, whose perma- 
nent "towns" or burrows, each marked by a hillock of earth 
about the entrance, spread densely over many acres under the 
natural prehistoric conditions, but now sometimes cover hun- 
dreds of square miles. The burrows are deep and extensive, 
and at first go down at a very steep slope to a depth of twelve 
to fifteen feet, when they turn horizontally, and here and there 
branch into chambers, some of which are family rooms, while 
in others - fodder is stored, or refuse and dung are deposited. 
The mound about the hole is packed hard, not only by the 
tramping of the animals, but by crowding it down with their 
noses ; this hillock prevents water from running into the burrows 

454 



PRAIRIE DOGS DESCRIBED 



when the plain is flooded by heavy rains, and also serves as a 
tower of observation. Following is an account of their habits 
and evil work which I prepared from original sources for the 
New International Encyclopedia, and which covers the subject 
in a condensed way : — 

"The prairie dogs feed upon grass and herbage, which is soon exhausted 
near the burrows, compelling the animals to go farther and farther away 
for food. This they dislike to 
do, as it exposes them to attack 
from enemies ; and after a time 
they prefer to dig a new burrow 
nearer a supply of food. Thus 
a 'town' is always spreading 
and contains many empty bur- 
rows. Like other animals 
habituated to desert regions, 
they do not drink at all, and 
the early belief that subterra- 
nean pits were dug by them, 
down to a water supply, has 
been proved erroneous. Arte- 
sian wells within dog towns 
have failed to strike water as 
often as elsewhere. The ani- 
mals are diurnal and most active morning and evening. They come out 
daily during the winter, except when it is very stormy; but this practice 
varies with the latitude and climate. 

" They are prolific, especially in the southern half of their territory, and 
would multiply with excessive rapidity were it not for numerous enemies, 
especially rattlesnakes and other serpents. These are courageously re- 
sisted by the prairie dogs, who sound the alarm the moment a snake enters 
a hole, gather, and proceed to fill the entrance with earth, packing it down, 
thereby sometimes entombing the snake forever. Probably few snakes go 
down the passages, which are so steep they could with difficulty climb out, 
but depend upon lying hidden in the grass and striking down the young 
squirrels when out at play or in search of food. This is the method of the 
coyote, kit fox, wild cat, hawks, and owls, who find the dog towns a profit- 
able hunting ground. Badgers, however, can, if they will, easily dig up a 
burrow and devour the helpless family. The worst enemy is the black - 

455 




Brownell, Phot. 

A Prairie Dog at the Mouth of his 
Burrow. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

footed ferret, a weasel of the plains, which easily penetrates the burrows, 

and against whose ferocity and skill the squirrels can make little defense. 

Every prairie dog town is also tenanted by many little burrowing owls. 

" All these conditions together served in the natural state of things to hold 

the prairie dogs in check, but the changes brought about by civilization 

. „ have been so favorable to these little animals, by the reduction 

A Pest. 

of their enemies on the one hand, and the augmentation on the 

other hand of their food supplies by the farmers' plantations of meadow 
grass, alfalfa, and grain, that they have increased into a very serious pest. 
Dr. Merriam stated in the Yearbook of the United States Department of 
Agriculture for 1901 that colonies twenty to thirty miles in length were then 
not rare ; and one in Texas was known to cover an area of twenty -five hun- 
dred square miles, with a probable average of twenty-five holes to an acre 
and of one animal to each hole. At this rate the prairie-dog population of 
this district would be forty millions ; and on the carefully studied estimate 
of students that two hundred and fifty squirrels will devour annually the 
same amount of grass as a cow, the pasturage consumed by this great 
colony would support over 1,500,000 cattle. When such a colony spreads 
over a district devoted to farming, the loss is increased, for the space 
occupied by their mounds is a waste of valuable land; the animals are 
likely to cut irrigation canals, draining off the water, and they devour the 
planted crops, especially of alfalfa. Both the federal government and 
local authorities have tried various methods for relief, but are almost help- 
less in view of the large spaces between cultivated districts, where the pest 
can only be overcome by public and united effort, and also by cooperation 
among the ranchmen. The squirrels may be killed by poison in various ways ; 
but best by the use of bisulphide of carbon. A teaspoonful of this cheap 
liquid is placed upon some absorbent substance (a nodule of dry horse 
dung or half a corncob will serve the purpose well), and dropped down the 
hole, which should then be stopped with earth. The fumes are heavy, 
sink into the depths of the burrow, and kill the inhabitants." 

These ground squirrels and prairie dogs naturally bridge 

the gap between the tree squirrels and the marmots, as they are 

styled in the Old World, or "woodchucks," as we 

Marmots. 

know them in the northern states, or " ground 
hogs," as they call them in the South. Marmots are of stouter 
build than gophers or susliks, with short, strong limbs, broad 
heads, no cheek pouches, short ears and tail, the first toe of the 

456 



EUROPEAN MARMOTS 



fore foot rudimentary, and rather harsh fur of a uniform grayish, 
reddish, or yellowish tint, deepening to blackish along the spine. 
In Europe there are two species, the big (twenty inches) Alpine 
marmot, and the lesser 
bobac of Russia and Si- 
beria; several more kinds 
inhabit central Asia north 
of India. 

"The districts inhabited by 
all the marmots of the Old 
World," says Lydekker, "are 
desolate and barren; being in 
most cases scorched with fierce 
heat in summer, while in win- 
ter they are subject to intense 
cold. . . . The occurrence of 
fossil remains of the alpine 
marmot in many parts of Eu- 
rope . . . leads to the conclu- 
sion that western Europe had 
at one time a more or less 
steppe-like climate. As milder 
and more genial climatic con- 
ditions supervened, the alpine 
marmot gradually retreated to 

the nearest mountain ranges ; and we thus have a complete explanation of its 
present isolated distributional areas. The habits of all the marmots of the 
Old World appear to be very similar; all the species of these animals liv- 
ing in large companies, and excavating burrows in which they pass the whole 
of the winter buried in profound slumber. ... All the species are diurnal 
in their habits; and their food is purely of a vegetable nature, consisting 
mainly of roots, seeds, and leaves of various plants. In the Himalaya the 
burrows are very generally constructed beneath the shelter of a plant of 
the wild rhubarb; and the tenants on a fine day take up their station on 
the mound at the entrance, or journey for a short distance in search of food. 
At the least alarm they rush at once to the entrance of their burrow, while 
they sit up on their hindquarters to survey the scene and detect the danger. 
If the enemy approach too close, the loud whistling scream is uttered, and 

457 




A Marmot. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



the animal dives headlong into its burrow. . . . The flesh of marmots is 
said to be of good flavor, and is largely consumed by the inhabitants of the 
Siberian Steppes." 

To this company belong our American woodchucks, and one 
of them, the Rocky Mountain "siffleur" or whistler, is a larger 
Wood- counterpart of the Alpine marmot, whose wild 

chuck. eerie whistle seems the voice of the spirit of the 

windy solitudes above timber line, where it makes its home. 
It is hunted eagerly by Indians for both its flesh and its fur. 

Our sober eastern 
"ground hog," 
however, has for- 
saken the prairie- 
dwelling tra- 
ditions of the 
tribe and taken to 
the woodlands, 
whither he is 
likely to retire for 
his winter refuge, 
even after spend- 
ing a summer in 
open fields. He is to be found everywhere east of the 
Plains, except along the Gulf coast, and northward to Lab- 
rador; other species of larger size occur west of the Plains 
and in the wooded Canadian Northwest. The habits of all 
of them are much the same as those of their cousins 
across the sea, and abound in queer, comical ways. The 
woodchuck affords a most striking example of hibernation; 
that is, the going into a deep sleep in winter, as a means of 
passing safely that part of the year. 

When the temperature sinks below a certain figure the vital energy of 
certain animals becomes so diminished that they fall into a more or less 
profound torpor. Semper's pet prairie dogs (living in Germany) began 

458 




Brownell, Phot. 



The Woodchuck. 



BEHAVIOR IN HIBERNATION 

to get drowsy at about 48 F. As the sleep deepens, the temperature of 
the body falls nearly to that of the surrounding air. Howath, quoted by 
Semper, 107 found that one of his zizels (ground squirrels), when Hiberna- 
hibernating in a room cooled down to 2 C. (35. 6° F.), had a tion - 
bodily temperature exactly the same; and another in a room 9 to io° C. 
had a temperature of 8.4 C. or 46. i° F. As the ordinary blood warmth 
of these animals in active life is about ioo° F., it will be seen, as Semper 
remarks, that "during their winter sleep warm-blooded animals become 
cold-blooded" ; and he adds that only such as are able to effect this change 
can become hibernaters. The true cold-blooded animals, and especially 
their eggs and young, can survive much lower temperatures than the warm- 
blooded ones, even to being partly frozen; but no warm-blooded one can 
endure that. Hence the hibernating mammals, to which we are now con- 
fining our attention, place themselves in situations protected from severe 
cold by digging deeply into the ground, or creeping within hollow logs or 
stumps, and surrounding themselves with blankets of dry leaves, grass, 
and so forth. Moreover, all are warmly clothed in fur, then at its longest 
and best condition. These things tend to keep the bodily warmth up to the 
low measure needed by the reduced necessities of their inactive condition. 
But during this time, in the real hibernaters, which lay up no stores of food, 
nothing is eaten, so that no fuel is received to be converted into bodily heat 
by the oxidation of the blood through breathing ; on the contrary, the lungs 
almost cease to work. There is an occasional respiration, — a sighing in- 
halation of breath, — but the most of the time the only oxygen which enters 
the lungs is the trifle reaching them by the effect of the slow beating 
of the heart, and by the process of the diffusion of gases. A mirror held 
before an animal in this condition is not clouded by its breath. The 
creature may be placed under water, or in a jar of carbonic acid gas, for 
an hour or more, and will not drown nor be suffocated; nevertheless, 
respiration and other functions do not wholly cease. 

What, then, supplies even the meager warmth required? It is the slow 
absorption and combustion of the fat stored up under the skin by the abun- 
dant feeding in the summer and autumn. That this is so, is shown by the 
fact that when they come out in the spring they are thin and weak ; curiously 
too, their awakening is followed by a period of failure, when they become 
so emaciated that often a late storm will kill them before they begin to pick 
up by voracious feeding. Their awakening must be gradual, too — the 
sudden forcible arousing of hibernaters, as by sudden warmth or handling 
or electric shocks, is likely to cause their death. Here a curious fact may 
be mentioned: in spite of their comatose condition, — which has been 

459 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

equaled by human beings in a trance state, — they are sensitive to the 
slightest touch; merely blowing on the hair will induce an instantaneous 
response, although not in the least arousing the sleeper. 

The period of hibernation varies not only with different kinds of ani- 
mals, but with the same kinds under different or even the same circum- 
stances. One woodchuck experimented upon by Dr. Mills, 108 though kept 
(in Canada) under precisely the same conditions as others which slept 
profoundly, "did not hibernate for an hour the whole winter, though he 
drowsed and slept enough." 

In spite of so much data we must confess that we are not yet 
certain what really causes this winter sleep ; but that it is of a 







The American Beaver. 



highly protective character cannot be doubted, since the true 
hibernaters are those whose food altogether fails in winter, and 
which is of such a nature that it could not be stored up, at least 
in sufficient quantity. Dr. A. S. Packard has discussed the 
whole subject ably in his article " Hibernation," in the New 
International Encyclopedia. 



Beaver. 



The beaver ! How shall I tell of him and his works in the 
few pages at my command; and how keep you 
interested without repeating or even enlarging the 
marvelous tales upon which his reputation rests? 

In the first place, this big water squirrel — for so he is, just 
as the muskrat is a giant among the meadow mice — is not 
wholly American, but a native of the north of the Old World 

460 



EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN BEAVERS 

as well. None has been known wild in England since historic 
records began; but their bones show that they must have been 
common enough there when the Roman pioneers landed, and 
they lingered in Scotland and Wales, according to Harting, 109 
until the twelfth century. On the continent they fared much 
better. A century ago they swam and worked in most of the 
larger German, French, and Austrian streams, and are not yet 
quite exterminated there, though the Swiss and Italian lakes, 
where they were so numerous in the days of the Neolithic lake 
dwellers, know them no more. It is less than a century since 
the animal abounded in Poland and western Russia, in the 
Caucasus, and even among the upper valleys of the Euphrates ; 
but they are now scarce even in the remoter rivers of Siberia, 
whence formerly came bales of their skins. Everywhere, in 
fact, they may be said to exist only by the protection of some 
powerful landowner. 

Whether these European beavers, called Castor fiber, are really 
a different species from our Castor canadensis, is a matter of 
dispute, and of small importance; to all intents and purposes 
they are the same. 

This is only one of many examples of substantial identity in the animal 
life of North America and Eurasia. The brown bear, gray wolf, white 
and red foxes, sable, lynx, certain seals and cetacea, bison, wapiti, moose 
(elk), bighorn, beaver, lemming; many falcons, owls, sea birds and shore 
birds of many kinds, waxwings and several finches; and certain fishes, 
especially of the salmon family, — are prominent examples of cases in 
which convenience, rather scientific candor, causes separate species to 
be named. The reason of this identity, of course, is the nearness of the 
two continents to each other in the far north, and the fact that they have 
actually been connected since modern forms of animal life arose, so that 
the ancestors of these now separated races were presumably a continuous 
stock in the North, where we know a milder climate existed in the Tertiary 
period than at present. No department of natural history is more inter- 
esting or enlightening than that of the distribution of plants and animals 
on the face of the earth; and the relation of this distribution, past and 
present, to the habits and habitats of the several groups and species. 

461 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

In America our beaver seems to have dwelt everywhere that 
suitable woods grew and waters ran, from northern Florida and 
the mountains of Mexico, northward as far as birch and willow 
trees grow. As for one hundred and fifty years its fur has been 
one of the most highly valued spoils of the trapper, and only 
recently, and in the more civilized parts of the continent, has 
its getting been at all restricted by law, it is not strange to learn 
that the animal survives only in a few isolated colonies east of 
the northern Rockies and south of the Canadian wilderness. 
That any are left is due, probably, more to the disuse, half a 
century ago, of its fur in hat making, following the invention 
of silk hats, than to anything else. Even now fifteen to twenty 
thousand skins a year are collected by the Hudson Bay and 
other fur companies, which, however, are now taking precau- 
tions against diminution of the supply by setting apart certain 
islands in northern Canada as preserves. 

The beaver is the largest of the rodents except the capybara, 
is about two feet long, without the tail, and weighs thirty to 
thirty-five pounds. As it is a dweller in cold waters, it has an 
exceedingly fine, close fur, with a dense under fleece and a thick 
skin which, when stripped off, forms an almost round mat. Its 
hind feet are webbed and are powerful swimmers, while the 
fore feet are small and as handy as those of a squirrel. The 
great yellow chisels of the front teeth are always sharp, and the 
tail is a most interesting organ; it is about a foot long, very 
strong, and expands into a flattened, oval mass of fatty tissue, 
clothed in a lustrous black horny skin that looks as if scaled. 

This remarkable tail has been called a trowel, and has been described 
as used to spread and pat the mud plastered upon the dams and lodges; 
also that it serves as a sledge which the other beavers load, and thus haul 
earth and stone. In reality, it is of great service in swimming and div- 
ing, and the loud slap it may give as an alarmed beaver dives acts as 
an effective signal of danger; but it takes no part in the constructive 
work. The food of the beaver is wholly vegetable, and mainly the bark 
of deciduous trees, especially birch, poplar, and maple — never of ever- 

462 



COXSTRUCTIXC A BEAVER DAM 

greens ; but the bulbous roots of lilies and other aquatic plants are also 
well liked. 

A beaver colony begins with the settlement upon some wood- 
land water, in midsummer, of a pair of young immigrants. 
Their first work is to dig a burrow in the bank, Dams and 
entered from beneath the water. This done, two Lod g es - 
conditions are needful to maintaining the homestead: one is 
that there must remain enough water in front of the burrow 
to cover the entrance, and bar out such enemies as wild cats and 
foxes, and the other, that the water must be too deep to freeze 



1 


G t * a I I 1 r, .. .1 


t u r 


1. a k e 


J 


1 . - 










1 


•"•At**. 




. 


, 



After Morgan. 

Map of the Great Beaver Dam at Grass Lake, Minn., in 1830. 

to the bottom. As the lowering waste of late summer admonishes 
them of danger in these directions, the beavers choose a point 
in their stream where the bottom is firm, and begin to make a 
dam high and strong enough to hold back the water at a proper 
height throughout the winter. 

They start by cutting saplings leafy at the top, and dragging or float- 
ing them to the place. The current straightens these out, with the brushy 
tips downstream, and they are forced to the bottom and made to lie there 
by having stones and mud heaped upon them ; it is astonishing what large 
stones the animals are able to roll and push into this service. This work 
is performed mainly at night, each animal doing what he thinks proper. 
The fine old stories of a superintendent who sets tasks, are as fanciful and 

463 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

untrue as the fable that they construct five-story houses, and make wattle- 
work like an Indian fish weir. They do nothing of the sort, but continue 
to heap up old sticks, earth, and stones anyhow, until they have formed 
some kind of a barrier, — always moving the materials with hands or 
teeth. 

Now this dam is always begun in the center of the stream. If the cur- 
rent is slight, it will run straight across, but where the current is fast the dam 
is likely to show a decided curve on its upstream side. This has been 
represented as an intelligent employment of the strength of the arch form 
against the current; but more probably it is simply the result of the action 
of the stream pressing down the wings of the first, central, obstruction. 
The water does not pour over the top of these dams, but filters through 
them, and its washing necessitates constant repairs, which are made on 
the inner (or upper) face, leaving the outer front a mere tangle of sticks 
and poles. Sometimes, however, a short high dam will get so filled in with 
earth that it becomes a solid, tree-grown dike; and some relics of this kind 
may be several centuries old. The length of a dam, of course, depends 
upon its site. In a flat valley, the most advantageous situation for a beaver 
colony, a pond will broaden rapidly, and the original channel-barrier must 
be extended to prevent the water running out beyond its wings ; and thus 
a few old dams in the level swampy woods about the sources of the Mis- 
sissippi exceeded one hundred and twenty-five yards in length. 

The young beavers of which I have spoken probably spent their 
first winter in a burrow, but when, next May, half a dozen young 
ones arrived, they would begin to build a lodge above ground. 
A beaver lodge is a hollow mound on the bank or on some islet, 
three or four feet high and eight or ten in outer diameter. It is 
erected in the same way as is the dam, of sticks, earth, and stones 
heaped around a hollow center, the floor of which is a little 
higher than the surface of the pond. As the dam grows and 
the pond expands and rises, the floor of the chamber is raised 
by hollowing out the interior overhead, and piling more stuff 
on the roof to equal the loss. It has two entrances, always 
beneath the water, for an opening into the air would admit 
both cold and enemies. The walls of such a lodge may be 
three feet thick and as solid as masonry. The beavers heap 
on patted mud, and drag over it astonishingly big limbs, so 

464 




Beavers at Work. 



2H 



465 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

that when the mass freezes the enormous strength of a bear or 
wolverine is hardly able to break it down ; but in summer both 
these marauders, and especially the latter, frequently tear it to 
pieces. The domed chamber within an old house will be six 
or seven feet in diameter, and in winter is snugly bedded with 
grass. Such a house stands a great many years — is a per- 
manent habitation, in fact; but never contains at once more 
than one family, which consists of the parents and two suc- 
cessive broods of young ; the third year the oldest youngsters 
leave, or are driven out to set up for themselves. In summer, 
however, when the babies are arriving, the old "buck" beavers 
all leave home and wander widely, keeping (or kept) away from 
their wives and little ones. 

There is, then, no real community life, even in a large beaver 
colony, except in the ownership and care of the waterworks, and 
there each works as he pleases, though all share the benefit of 
his labors. Each separate family builds and repairs and occu- 
pies its own lodge, and provides its own store of food. 

This food, as I have said, is mainly birch, poplar, and maple 

bark, and it can be obtained only by gnawing down trees. This 

the beavers do as often as necessary, but mainly 

Food. . . V . J 

late m autumn, in preparation for the impending 
winter. At that season they attack large trees, — sometimes 
eighteen inches in diameter, — and gnaw them off by standing 
on their hind legs and biting all round them until they fall. 
Having felled a tree, the family busies itself in saving a store 
of bark for winter use. For this purpose the smaller brushy 
parts of the limbs are first cut off and dragged or floated nearly 
to the door of the house, where they are sunk to the bottom of 
the pond, and somehow fastened there. The larger limbs are 
then cut into manageable lengths and put into the same place; 
and there they stay until one by one, during the winter, they are 
dragged into the lodge and stripped for food. Then the de- 
nuded logs are thrown out and form the materials for repair 

466 



CANALS FOR BRINGING HOME FOOD 



work in the spring. This, as you will see, is hard work, and 
after the trees have been cut from near the bank of the stream 
•the animals would be com- 
pelled to leave it, were it 
not for further ingenuity 
in engineering. The con- 
tinual raising and exten- 
sion of the dam deepens 
and spreads the pond, and 
little by little makes fresh 
trees accessible; but the 
clever little woodsmen do 
more than this, for they 
dig regular canals, some- 
times hundreds of feet in 
length, where the ground 
is low, in order to reach 
groves of desirable trees, 
and so get stores of bark 
out of reach were they 
obliged to carry it over- 
land. There is perhaps 
no more useful part in the whole service of a beaver 
dam than the keeping full of these water roads, for they 
are the highways of both food and safety to the whole 
community. 

The beaver was at the foundation of our national wealth, and is still 
one of the important objects of the fur hunter and trader. It has excited 
enormous interest, and has been made the subject of at least two special 
books. 110 Lately, many descriptive articles, illustrated by instructive 
photographs, have been printed in American magazines, but they seem to 
have added nothing beyond their pictures to the accurate and exhaustive 
studies of Morgan. These animals do well in the semicaptivity of park 
streams, and most zoological gardens, especially those at New York and 
Washington, contain flourishing colonies, while they have been successfully 

467 




After Morgan. 

Forest Canal cut by Beavers. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

reintroduced into Great Britain on the estate of the Marquis of Bute and 
elsewhere. 

The last to be mentioned of the rodents is a small and 
secluded group of animals of the northwestern coast of the 
United States, known in books by their Indian names sewellel 
and showtl, but locally in their Oregon home as mountain 
beavers, or boomers, — the last in reference to the hollow cry. 
They have some relationship to beavers, but are set apart by 
the latest students of their position into a superfamily Aplo- 
dontiae. They are small, robust creatures, about a foot long, 
and are brownish, with close fur, short ears, minute eyes, very 
long stiff whiskers, and stubby tails. They dwell in colonies 
in wet mountain meadows, burrowing long tunnels through 
the marshy soil, making small heaps of sticks and rubbish, or 
"houses," above the principal entrance to the underground 
residence, and feeding on bark, herbs, roots, etc. Some of this 
seems to be stored, although they do not hibernate in winter, 
but come out daily, even in snowy times. Their flesh and fur 
were both highly valued by the Indians. These animals are 
nocturnal, shy, and not well known ; but what has been learned 
of their habits may be found in the works of Coues and 
Allen, 267 J. K. Lord, 268 and in The American Naturalist, 1877, 
page 434, and 1878, page 10. 



468 



ANT-EATERS, SLOTHS, AND ARMADILLOS — Order, 

EDENTATA 

It follows naturally from the rise of the animal world, as a 
whole, by development from simply organized forms to those 
more complex and specialized, that as we descend from higher 
groups to lower, we shall find the latter of more and more ancient 
stock. We have now arrived at the Edentata, among the low- 
est of the eutherian orders, and we find not only that their 
beginnings are lost in the obscurity of a very remote past, but 
that those now living are mere enfeebled remnants of an order 
formerly of leading importance. It is not surprising, then, to 
find also that all the edentates inhabit South America, since 
that is the most ancient and unchanged of all the continents, 
save Australia. A few sorts of ant-eaters, sloths, and arma- 
dillos, — small, frightened, dull-witted creatures of no practi- 
cal account — are all that remain ; but in the early periods of 
the Age of Mammals living species were reckoned by hun- 
dreds, and stood foremost in the animal world of their time. 

The great Brazilian ant-eater, tamandua assu or yurumi, 
is a shaggy animal about eighteen inches tall, grayish black, 
marked bv a black-and-white pointed stripe or 

J x m L Ant-eater. 

" banner," as the Brazilians say, reaching back 

from the throat to the hips. The total length may reach seven 

feet, but this is mainly head and tail. 

This tail is the biggest thing of the kind in the mammal world, I guess, 
and has set many heads at thinking of what use it is. Wallace 27 says: 
"During rain it turns its long bushy tail up over its back and stands still; 
the Indians, when they meet with one, rustle the leaves and it thinks rain is 
falling, and, turning up its tail, they take the opportunity of killing it by a 

469 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

blow on the head with a stick." In contrast to this is the suggestion of 
Bigg-Wither, 25 ' 2 who believes that the tail serves well to keep off annoying 
insects, especially bees, which, although stingless, are liable to settle in 
myriads upon any animal raiding their nests, — but we do not know that 
this animal ever robs these bees. The tail is, in fact, a useful mantle wrapped 
about the creature when it sleeps, warding off insects, hiding its colors 
from view, shedding rain, and keeping the temperature, about the body 
equable. It is ordinarily trailed.. 

The ant-eater's long neck tapers into an equally long head, 
with very small eyes, ears, and nostrils; the skull, indeed, re- 




Great Ant-eater, or Tamandua. 

sembles that of a bird, and contains small room for brain. The 
hind feet are normally plantigrade and bearlike, but the fore 
feet are lifted upon the toes, and so bent in at the wrist that 
the weight rests upon the outside edge, with the great hook- 
like claws bent under. The animal never leaves the ground, 
and evidently no great activity is possible to it with such a 
club-footed deformity ; its utmost efforts at speed are a shuffling 
run, easily overtaken by a boy. The purpose of the great fore 
paws (as of the precisely similar ones of the pangolin) is to en- 
able the animal to tear to pieces the earthen mounds or rotting 

470 



ABILITIES OF THE ANT-EATER 

stumps and logs sheltering the ants which form its sole food. 
The instant their homes are wrecked, the insects rush out in 
swarms, whereupon the ant-eater throws out its very long, nar- 
row, ribbonlike and sticky tongue, — a living fly paper, — to 
which the insects are glued and then brought into the mouth. 
This operation is repeated with lightning-like rapidity until no 
more ants remain. The viscid saliva is contained in two bags 
(glands), which reach far back through the throat and over the 
chest, the orifices of which in the mouth are under muscular 
control. As a result of this copious supply, the animal slobbers 
too much to be a pleasant object. 

"It seems almost incredible," remarks Azara, 131 "that so robust and 
powerful an animal can procure sufficient subsistence from ants alone; 
but this circumstance has nothing strange in it to those who are acquainted 
with the tropical parts of America, and who have seen the enormous mul- 
titudes of these insects, which swarm in all parts of the country to that 
degree that their hills often almost touch one another for miles together." 

Notwithstanding its powerful digging tools, the ant-eater does 
not burrow, but "has a regular lair, or, at least, an habitual 
place of resort, generally situated among tall grass, where it 
spends the day in slumber, lying on one side, with its head 
buried in the long fur of the chest, the legs folded together, 
and the huge tail curled round the exposed side of the body." 
As to the animal's defensibility, much confusion of statement 
is met with in books. That it either can defend itself, or is 
well protected by some quality, is plain from the fact that it is 
widespread and fairly numerous; also that it produces but a 
single offspring annually, which remains with its mother for 
eighteen months or so, when young riding about on her back. 
The Indians and woodsmen have always insisted that although 
by careful management you could drive one right into camp, 
when it was aroused or assaulted it became a very dangerous 
customer, and was capable of killing even the jaguar by the 

471 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



terrific strength of its fore arms in striking and hugging an 
antagonist. But Azara, who writes at length on the animal's 
habits, ridicules this, and assures us that a jaguar would knock 
an ant-eater dead before it got ready to resist. Here is an actual 
occurrence in Costa Rica, reported in The Field of Nov. 12, 

1892, which shows what happens 
when an ant-eater is incautiously 
assailed : — 

"One of these animals was creeping 
slowly amongst the stumps and fallen 
logs, and poking its long snout into the 
crevices in search of its insect food. 
We were unarmed, but thought we 
could make an easy capture of such 
a harmless-looking beast. When the 
ant-eater saw that it could not escape, 
it threw itself upon its back, and D. 
rather imprudently seized it by the 
neck; immediately the brute struck 
out one of its paws and buried its for- 
midable claws deep in the palm of his 
hand. It was impossible for him to 
free himself from the grasp of this 
monster, though he knelt upon its 
stomach and tried his best to choke 
it, suffering excruciating pain all the 
time. Fortunately, B. was near at hand, and after a little delay found a 
heavy stick and with some difficulty, succeeded in stunning the brute, when 
its claws relaxed. We thought the animal was dead, and carried it between 
us on a stick to the house, but hardly had we put it down on the ground 
when it recovered itself, arid made a fresh attack, and seized B. by the leg, 
making a deep gash. Thinking it was too dangerous a beast to keep alive, 
we now killed it and preserved the skin. The skin was remarkably thick, 
and the fore legs or arms exceedingly powerful. . . . The Spaniards when 
they saw it said the ant-eater was a dangerous animal to encounter, and that 
they had seen dogs killed on the spot, with the claws of the ant-eater actu- 
ally interlocked in their bodies. This animal measured six and a half feet, 
including its bushy tail, which is two feet long." 

473 




Edentate Claws. 

Bones of forefoot of the lesser ant- 
eater : I-V, digits, showing the vast 
enlargement of the third toe ; u-lm, 
wrist-bones. 



ANT-EATERS AND SLOTHS 

The lesser ant-eater or caguari is not more than half as 
large as the other, and lives altogether in trees, curling up to 
sleep in a crotch. It has a shorter head, large ears, short 
bristly hair of variable light tints, and a long, strong, terete 
tail, naked, scaly, and prehensile toward the end. The whole 
animal smells abominably. It is more powerfully clawed than 
even its cousin, rips up bark and dead wood in search of ter- 
mites, or tears open the nests of wasps to get the honey and 
grubs; and, judging by the viciousness with which it will fight 
cats and dogs, is well able to defend itself against natural 
enemies. 

Finally, northern Brazil and the Isthmus region possess a 
species, the silky " two-toed" ant-eater, no larger than a rat, 
bright yellow in color, and seldom seen, for it is nocturnal and 
keeps in the tree tops, aided by a prehensile tail. It seems to 
live mainly on wasp grubs. Von Sack 257 gives an interesting 
account of one he kept in confinement, which reminded him by 
its behavior of a miniature sloth. 

The sloths, forming the family Bradypodidae, and known 
through all the forested lowlands of tropical America, are 
really pretty close counterparts of the ant-eaters in 
organization, but have more the form of apes, being 
very hairy, and having exceedingly long and muscular limbs, 
ending in double or triple hooks rather than in anything like 
ordinary hands or feet. These hooks are the long curved claws 
by which these animals, which spend their whole lives in trees, 
hang back downward beneath a branch, or slowly scramble 
about. This, and clinging to one another's shaggy coat, are al- 
most all the hands and feet are ever asked to do. The food 
is nothing but leaves, plucked with the lips and swallowed with 
little crushing, for the creature's only teeth are a few in each 
cheek, without any coating of enamel and fixed in the jaws like 
pegs. There are two types of sloth, — one, the ai or tardo, 
having two toes on the fore feet, and the other, the unau, three 

473 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



toes. The former is the more specialized, widespread, and cele- 
brated. The two differ in their teeth and certain other ana- 
tomical points, and also in the particular tinge of green on the 
coarse, brittle hair. 

This greenness of the hair is not only singular as a mammalian color, 
but in its nature, for it is due to a growth of microscopic plants (algae), 
which become rooted in the crevices of the surface of the hair, and flourish 

there as long as the 
animal lives. The 
hairs of the two kinds 
of sloths differ in 
structure, and sup- 
port different species 
of alga; and the 
plant does not be- 
gin to grow in the fur 
of the young (from 
spores caught from its 
mother's fur) until it 
approaches adulthood 
and goes away by it- 
self. 65 This fact, and 
the broader one that 
it helps to make the 
animal less easily 
visible in the foliage, 
causes this growth of 
algae to be regarded 
as a protective adap- 

Copyrlght, N. Y. Zool. Society. Sanborn, Phot. tation. Attention Was 

Tardo, or Two-toed Sloth. called to it long ago. 

Thus Van Sack notes 
that "the color and even the shape of the hair are much in appear- 
ance like withered moss, and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but 
particularly when it gets that orange -colored spot between the shoulders, 
and lies close to the tree; it looks then exactly like a piece of branch 
where the rest has been broken off, by which the hunters are often de- 
ceived." The color disappears from stuffed skins, because the minute 
vegetation dies after the animal itself ceases to live. 

474 







HELPLESSNESS OF SLOTHS 

That the creature which Buffon declared needed only one 
more defect to put an end to its race altogether, should have 
all the assistance in hiding it can get, is evident, for it is quite 
incapable of making any serious defense — or even trying to. 
"Here we have," says Tschudi, "a symbol of life under the ut- 
most degree of listlessness, and of the greatest insensibility in a 
state of languid repose. This emblem of misery fixes itself on 
an almost leafless bough, and there remains defenseless; a 
ready prey to any assailant." Big weasels climb the trees and 
fasten upon its throat ; harpies tear it loose and carry it off to 
their eyries ; cats, large and small, take one when they find it 
without making any exertion; "a hungry bear collects a family 
of sloths as he would gather a bunch of grapes;" and a hungry 
Indian or negro does the same, when he is not too lazy to climb 
and search the tree from which some evening he hears the tardo's 
wailing cry. The sloth does his best, however, to escape notice, 
remaining all day in motionless simulation of some feathery tuft 
of moss or mistletoe, and making his slow excursions about the 
branches only after dusk. If you shoot him, he will probably 
hang dead by his hooks until decomposition relaxes the muscles. 

Xo one has written of the sloth more knowingly than Dr. 
Felix Oswald, 120 who has told us so much of the intimate life of 
the animals of Mexico ; and those who cannot get access to his 
book may find large quotations from it in the excellent " Standard 
Natural History." Other worthy sources of information are 
Alston, 114 who quotes in his account a long and quaint descrip- 
tion by old Dampier; and the ever readable writings of H. W. 
Bates 25 and Thomas Belt. 26 

As to the armadillos, the bony armor by which all are more 
or less protected, and which is unique among living Arma- 
mammals, is only one of many extraordinary fea- 
tures in their anatomy. Not only are they considerably re- 
moved in structure from the sloths and ant-eaters, but they 

475 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



differ greatly among themselves. All have numerous peglike 
teeth, and the giant armadillo (Priodon) may have more 
than forty in each jaw. 

The most distinctive feature of the group is the "quasi coat of mail," 
as Theodore Gill calls it, in the form of a carapace, which covers all the back 
and sometimes the head and tail also. It is formed like a mosaic by the 

union of many small 
bony pieces formed 
within the skin and 
later overlaid by a 
horny -pellicle. Each 
piece or "scute" of the 
mosaic has a shape 
and surface-sculpturing 
characteristic of the 
species. This armor 
may be all in one piece, 
but usually consists of 
several, giving needed 
flexibility to the body. 
On the abdomen and 
limbs, or wherever, in- 
deed, there is no armor, 
the skin is clothed with 
hairs, which also sprout 
out between the zones of plates. "The armor is doubtless useful against 
the attacks of their many carnivorous and reptile enemies. It assists them 
in burrowing, keeps off pressure, and may protect those which live in 
forests against a falling bough. They are passive creatures, mostly noc- 
turnal in their habits, and their skeleton is strengthened in some parts 
in relation to its armor and its office." 

The most advanced of the armadillo race is the Brazilian one, 
about eighteen inches long, named Scleropeura, and given high- 
est place because it has almost no carapace, mere traces of armor 
mingling with the hair which clothes the body, so that it is 
approximated to the ant-eaters. 

Of the typical armadillos the leader is the " giant" armadillo 
of the Amazon Valley, which may measure three feet from its 

476 




Copyright, N. Y. Z 



Sanborn, Phot. 



An Armadillo, the Peludo. 






ARMADILLOS OF THE PAMPAS 

nose to the root of its rather long tail. It has tremendously 
powerful claws, and is reputed to dig up corpses, but in fact 
lives mainly on ants and termites. Its armor looks like a uni- 
form coat of mail, but really is disposed in five belts. 

X- i i j i i • • Peludo. 

A early as large, and more extended m its range 
toward the south, is the tatouay, with a short, nearly naked 
tail and twelve or thirteen bands of plates. To the south of 
this, all over Paraguay and Argentina, are found several other 
much smaller species, as the peludo, of which Hudson 35 has 
written at such length. It lives on the pampas, where in some 
places its burrows are so numerous as to make riding dangerous. 
Wherever a horse dies, or other carrion lies, these little 
animals gather and devour the putrid flesh voraciously. They 
also eat much plant food, but their chief diet consists of insects, 
mainly worms, which they detect underground by scent and 
then obtain by boring holes with their triangular armored snouts, 
turning round and round with their noses pushed into the soil, 
like animated gimlets, until they reach and seize the grub or 
earthworm they are after. Hudson describes the cleverness 
with which a tame one he had would trace a wild mouse to its 
lurking place by quartering the ground and following the scent ; 
also how they search for the nests of ground-building birds and 
devour the eggs or fledglings; and especially how they kill 
snakes by leaping upon them, settling down across their writh- 
ing bodies, paying no attention to the reptiles' striking and biting 
at their shells, and then swaying their bodies back and forth 
until the jagged lower edges of the shield have literally sawed 
the serpent into halves, when it is eaten. This and its related 
species are scarcer and more wary than formerly, not only be- 
cause they disappear rapidly and unaccountably as soon as a 
district is settled, but because they are hunted for the sake of 
their flesh by the help of dogs trained to rush and seize them 
before they can reach their burrows or disappear in impromptu 
excavations. Some of the smaller species are said to make their 

477 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

way so rapidly in the loose pampas soil that a man must fairly 
tumble off his horse if he means to catch one before it has put 
itself below the surface. 

Differing from these in various ways are several other arma- 
dillos, of which one kind, the little "apars," have very solid 
bucklers over their fore shoulders and rumps, but the central 
zone separated into three narrow bands; and these are the 
armadillos which roll themselves into tight balls, which a dog 
or wild cat may tumble about till they are tired but can get no 
tooth into ; then the apar lets the kinks out of the special mus- 
cles which enable him to curve and hold his shell around him, 
uncoils and trots away on the very tips of his toes in the most 

comical of pony gaits. 
The apars are noted, in- 
deed, for their lively and 
restless manners. As for 
the peba, that is a "nine- 

apars, rolled into Balls. " banded " species chiefly in- 

teresting because so com- 
mon in Mexico and western Texas, and the only member 
of its clan counted among Uncle Sam's animal citizens. It 
is equally numerous and familiar in all the drier parts of 
South America, and is best liked of all when nicely baked 
in its own shell. Pleasantly told anecdotes of their ways 
as they potter about, " respectful of others' rights, but calmly 
confident in their tooth-and-claw-proof armor," may be read 
in the Beebes' "Two Bird Lovers in Mexico" — a delight- 
ful book. 

Quite separate from all these there is or was, for perhaps 
none are left, on the western border of the Argentine pampas, 
a miniature pink and white armadillo, not larger than a mouse, 
the pichiciego, whose armor is constructed after a very differ- 
ent plan from the others. Lydekker 10 describes its peculiari- 
ties in detail, 

478 




PEDIGREE OF ARMADILLOS 



What has been the history of these queer little creatures? 
In no group of mammals is the contrast between the present 
and the past so striking as in these edentates. As Ancestry of 
to their remote beginnings, little or nothing is known, entates - 
but representatives of the three South American groups have 
been obtained from nearly the whole breadth of the Tertiary for- 
mations. The fossils show that the ant-eater-sloth type was sepa- 




. WttONjgjjf. 



Apar, or Three-banded Armadillo. 



rated very early from the armadillo type, and never have had 
associated with them any Old World fodients. In the earlier 
Tertiary strata of Patagonia, there occur the remains of animals 
which have slothlike characteristics in skull and teeth, but are 
evidently not arboreal, and therefore have been called " ground 
sloths." They measured only about three feet in total length, 
had no armor or weapons of defense, and, as they were sur- 
rounded by big, rapacious beasts, it is surmised that they 
must have been burrowers, since otherwise they could not 
have existed so long and plentifully as they did; their strong, 
well-clawed fore limbs certainly imply digging powers. It is 

479 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

apparent that these comparatively pygmy ground sloths were 
the ancestors of the megatheres and their relatives, which 
later were among the most gigantic beasts of the ancient 
world. 

Some of these huge edentates became known long ago, for in 1789 a 
nearly complete skeleton of one of them, named Megatherium by Cuvier, 
was exhumed near Buenos Aires and sent to Paris, where it was mounted 
Megathe- an( l ma y still be seen at the Museum of Natural History. 
rium. Many other specimens, and the skeletons of allied species, 

have since been found in the Pampean formations of Pleistocene age, when 
these mighty animals flourished. The megatheres were very bulky, the 
largest measuring about eighteen feet in total length (yet the tail was not 
long, although extremely massive), and had big, roundish, slothlike heads, 
and short, massive limbs, especially as to the hinder pair, where the haunches 
were of enormous breadth and strength. The structure of the fore foot is 
essentially that of the modern ant-eater, the inner toe being rudimentary, 
the next three, and more especially the middle one, enormously enlarged 
and furnished with huge claws ; and during life the creature rested on the 
outside of the fifth claw and the backs of the three large toes in ant-eater 
fashion. Its hind foot, however, was not at all ant-eaterlike, for that ani- 
mal stands upon a flat sole while the megathere walked only on its outer 
edge; the great middle toe, which constituted nearly the whole foot and 
was armed with a terrible claw, does not seem to have touched the ground 
in walking, and so the claw was not dulled. "Some idea of the gigantic 
proportions of the megatheres," Lydekker tells us, "may be gathered from 
the circumstance that its hind foot measured nearly a yard in length." 

The mouth of the megathere contained teeth in the form of square 
prisms, with a length of more than ten inches and a diameter of one and a 
half inches. These teeth were rootless and continued growing, and their 
arrangement shows that between them lay a huge tongue that probably 
could be stretched far out. The structure of these teeth and of other parts 
shows that the megatheres were far removed from being sloths; but the 
gap is somewhat filled by the mylodons, contemporary and somewhat 
smaller animals of the same general appearance, the special feature of which 
was the presence in their skins, near the outer surface, of a great number 
of bony nodules like beans. There was still another group of related ani- 
mals at that time, — the great scelidotheres, — differing decidedly from 
those already mentioned in having elongated narrow skulls, so that when 
alive they must have resembled ant-eaters. 

480 



NATURE OF GROUND SLOTHS 

It is evident from their massiveness that these ground sloths 
were terrestrial ; their limbs and feet show that they must have 
been very slow and clumsy in movement, and no Ground 
creature so heavy and short-legged could climb a sloths - 
tree. Nevertheless monstrous creatures like these could not 
have obtained sustenance in a treeless region, such as that of 
the pampas now is, and we may assume from this and other 
circumstances that in their day the Argentine plains were 
forested. "Browsing on the leaves and perhaps on the smaller 
branches of forest trees, the ground sloths probably obtained 
their food by rearing themselves up against the trunks, sup- 
ported on the tripod formed by their massive hind limbs and 
powerful tail." That they continued to inhabit the land after 
humanity had invaded their haunts, is testified to by undoubted 
evidence, including bones wounded with stone arrowheads, and 
pictures left upon the walls of caves once human homes. These 
prehistoric draughtsmen hunted the megatheres and ate their 
flesh; there is evidence even that they had domesticated some 
of the ground sloths — probably as a reserve supply of food. 
In certain dry caves of Patagonia have even been found large 
fragments of their hides, still clothed with long coarse hair ; and 
it is plain that they came to an end only a few thousands of 
years ago — how or why is one of the mysteries of zoology. 137 

Even more extraordinary were the forerunners of the arma- 
dillos, the glyptodons, perhaps the most astonishing of all 
extinct mammals. Instead of the movable plate Giypto- 
armor of the armadillos, their cousins of the late 
Tertiary had bodies protected by a bony shell or "carapace," 
which gave them a striking outward resemblance to turtles; 
but anatomically they were very unlike those reptiles, for the 
carapace had no attachment to the skeleton, but was composed 
of a mosaic of little plates of bone formed within the skin, vary- 
ing in shape and sculpture according to species, joined by their 
edges, and covered with a horny coat. Each bit of the mosaic 

2 I 4 8l 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

enlarged as the animal grew. As some of these glyptodons, 
which fall into several genera, had shells several feet long, the 
weight carried was relatively enormous. Consequently the legs 
and feet, especially those of the hinder pair, are short and mas- 
sive, with the soles planted flat and firm, and "nearly the whole 
of the vertebrae are welded together so that a large portion of 
the backbone forms a continuous solid tube." The head is 
protected by a bony helmet. The tail in most species was nearly 
as long as the body, and its vertebrae also, as the animal attained 
to full size, united into a slender hollow cone armed or orna- 
mented with rings of spikes and knobs, "forming a protective 
case against which little short of a steam hammer would have 
been of any avail." Woodward 60 gives a fine figure of this 
armor. 

None reached so great a size or so bizarre an aspect as did 

the club-tailed glyptodon (Daedicurus) of Patagonia. In this 

monster, sometimes twelve feet in total length, the 

Daedicurus. . .. . . .. . , . 

carapace is humped in outline and each piece in its 
mosaic is rhomboidal in form, and pierced with from two to five 
large circular holes. Woodward 60 considers these simply the 
passages (foramina) by which blood vessels and nerves reached 
the surface layers of the skin ; but Dr. Lydekker regards them, 
from the analogy of the living hairy armadillo, as the exits of 
large bristles or quills, making the whole animal look like a 
gigantic porcupine. He says : — 

"Still more extraordinary is the conformation of the huge tail, which 
had a length of about five feet. At its base this appendage was encircled 
by about half a dozen double bony rings, nearly as large at the base as the 
iron hoops in the middle of an ordinary beer barrel, their component plates 
being pierced by the aforesaid holes for bristles. The whole of the termi- 
nal half of the tail is formed by one continuous piece of hollow bone, which 
... is almost as much as a man can lift. Starting at its base in the form of 
a nearly cylindrical tube this sheath rapidly expands at the sides, and be- 
comes flattened on the upper and lower surfaces, until at the tip it finally 
assumes the form of a depressed, flattened club, which would have formed 

482 



GIGANTIC GLYPTODONS 

a most effective weapon for a giant. Along the sides of its extremity this 
club is marked by a number of oval, depressed disks, showing a sculptured 
pattern of ridges and grooves radiating from the center, and some of them 
attaining a length of six or seven inches. From the structure of their 
sculpture it seems evident that during life these disks formed the bases of 
huge horns projecting at right angles to the tail, which would thus have 
formed a veritable cheval de jrise. If, as is quite probable, these horns 
were as long as those of the common African rhinoceros, the tail of the daedi- 
curus must have presented a most extraordinary appearance as it dragged 
on the ground behind its owner (for it is impossible to believe any muscles 
could have raised such a stupendous structure). The use of these horny 
appendages is, however, hard indeed to guess, since the creature was amply 
protected by the underlying bone; and it is therefore probable that they 
must come under the category of ornamental appendages. Be this as it 
may, with its bristle-clad body and horned tail, the club-tailed glyptodon 
may well lay claim to the right of being one of the most extraordinary 
creatures that ever walked this earth during the whole of the Tertiary 
period." 65 

These ring-tailed glyptodons seem to be the direct descendants 
of the pygmy ancestors with which the race began in the early 
Tertiary. Their habits were probably much like those of 
modern plant-eating armadillos (for the glyptodons were exclu- 
sively vegetable feeders), and the big ones seem to have been 
fond of retiring into caves. 

"When standing with the edges of its impenetrable carapace resting 
on the ground, its mail-crowned head partially withdrawn within the front 
aperture of its shell, and only the lower portions of the limbs exposed, a 
glyptodon must have been safe from all foes save savage man, and even he 
must have had a tough job to slaughter the monster, if, indeed, he ever 
succeeded in doing so. That man did exist with the later glyptodons . . . 
is proved by more than one kind of evidence. Probably the empty cara- 
paces of the larger members of the group were employed by the primitive 
inhabitants of Argentina as huts; and it is said that they are sometimes 
even so used at the present day by the Indians." 65 

In his interesting and valuable book, "Notes of a Naturalist in South 
America" (London, 1887), Mr. John Ball, F.R.S., mentions the scientific 
labors among the Indians near Bahia Blanca, on the northern border of 
Patagonia, of a learned gentleman, M. Georges Claraz, who told him that 

483 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

he had collected evidence among the Indians "which seemed to prove, that 
the Glyptodon survived in Patagonia down to a comparatively recent 
period, and that the tradition of its presence is preserved in the stories and 
songs of the natives." 

Along with these great "tortoise armadillos" — the glypto- 
dons — lived the ancestors of the true armadillos. Their re- 
mains are not numerous in museums, but such as have been 
studied are very similar to their modern descendants, showing 
how conservative this group has been, and, incidentally, how 
little change has taken place for ages in the climate or geography 
of South America. 

Some rather obscure fossils of the lowest Eocene rocks of 
North America, deemed by some authorities ancestral to the 
Edentata, are classified in an order Ganodonta. 



484 



OLD WORLD ANT-EATERS — Order, FODIENTIA 

Although in their outward form and habits there is consider- 
able resemblance between the American edentates and the scaly 
ant-eaters and termite-hunting aard-varks of Africa, and al- 
though until lately the latter have been included in the order 
Edentata, the differences of structure between them and the 
three American families are so deep-seated that modern care 
in classification compels their being set apart in another order; 
the propriety of this is emphasized by the fact that no extinct 
forms allied to either group have ever been found in the hemi- 
sphere of the other. Furthermore, the distinctions of structure 
between the aard-varks and the pangolins are, in the view of 
some good naturalists, quite as important as those separating 
both from the ant-eaters, etc., of the New World, and hence they 
would assign each to an order by itself; but for the present it 
may be considered that the aard-varks and pangolins stand 
together in the order Fodientia. This group is inferior in 
general organization to the Edentata, and so far as we know 
has had no such a history in geological time. It represents an 
independent line of development "converging" toward a like- 
ness with the American edentates through having followed a 
similar method of making a living. 

The aard-varks are among the strangest of animals — in 
form somewhat like a thinly haired, yellowish bear, with a pig's 
snout, donkey's ears, and kangaroo's tail ! A full- 
grown one may measure six feet in total length. One 
kind inhabits South Africa, another northeastern Africa, and 
two others are known as fossils in the Pliocene and Oligocene 

485 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



rocks of southern Europe. They feed wholly on ants and ter- 
mites, digging at night into the bases of their hills, and also 
making deep burrows for living quarters, where a single naked 



Aard-vark, or Cape Ant-eater. 

and very feeble " earth pig" is born each spring. Though 
these animals are almost never seen, their burrows show that 
they have been numerous until recently throughout eastern 
Africa; now they are becoming scarce, because the natives 
hunt them incessantly for the sake of their hides. The aard- 
vark has an almost full set of teeth, but of a very unusual 
structure. 

There seems to be no real affinity between the aard-varks and 
the American edentates, and hardly any between them and the 
Pango- toothless pangolins or " scaly ant-eaters " of the family 
Manidae. The scales which give the latter quaint 
little animals their spruce-conelike armor are horny and over- 
lap, and between them grow hairs, but they are totally unlike 
the bony armature of the armadillo. At birth the scales are 
soft but quickly harden, and at full age are so thick and strong 
as to resist the tooth and nail of any enemy. A pangolin, when 
attacked, instantly draws in head, legs, and tail, and becomes a 
scaly ball which a leopard, for instance, might well roll about 

486 



LEGENDS OF PANGOLINS 

as a plaything but could get no further satisfaction out of. It 
puzzles a strong man to persuade one to "open up." They 
subsist wholly on ants and termites caught at night by scraping 
open their nests and licking up the insects. 

Oriental writers relate a legend, widespread among Malays 
and Japanese, that the pangolin " erects his scales and feigns 
to be dead; the ants creep between the erected scales, after 
which the ant-eater again closes its scales and enters the water; 
he now again erects the scales, the ants are set floating, and 
are then swallowed by the ant-eaters." 

Three species are West African, one reaching an adult length 
of six feet, and one, the "phatagen" of the ancients, living 
mainly in trees. Three species of smaller size are East Indian 
or Malayan, the latter hunting mainly in the tree tops of the 
forest, and dwelling in hollow trunks. 




West African Pangolin, or Manis. 



487 



THE MARSUPIALS- Of det, MARSUPIALIA 

The marsupials are a group of mammals so peculiar in their 
structure and distribution that for a long time they were re- 
garded as constituting a subclass completely apart. Their 
most striking peculiarity is their method of reproduction. . The 
female's internal reproductive organs are double throughout, 
whereas in all the mammals heretofore described these organs 
are paired only in the ovaries, from which ducts lead to a single 
sac (uterus) in which the offspring begins its growth. The 
fertilized egg there becomes attached to a particular part of 
the interior wall and develops in organic connection with the 
mother, her blood circulating through the veins of the embryo, 
and nourishing it by means of an intervening temporary modi- 
fication of the surface of the uterus called the " placenta"; and 
there the embryo remains growing until it has reached an 
advanced age of readiness. Such mammals are said to be 
"placental." In marsupials and more primitive monotremes, 
Reproduc- however, the internal reproductive organs of the 
tl0n ' female are more or less perfectly paired in all their 

parts ; and the embryos have no organic attachment to the wall 
of the uterus, so that these mammals are "implacental." Hence, 
instead of remaining within the mother's body until they are 
grown into a condition where they can almost take care of 
themselves as soon as born, the embryos in this group escape 
from the uterus and body of the mother at a very early stage, 
when utterly helpless and minute, being, even in the case of the 
largest kangaroos, hardly as big as mice. It would be fatal, of 
course, to turn them loose upon the world; and therefore the 
mother is provided with a fold of skin, forming a more or less 

488 



THE YOUNG IN THE POUCH 



perfect pouch (marsupium) on the hinder part of the abdomen, 
within which are the numerous teats. 

The instant an embryo is dropped the mother picks it up 
with her fore paws and places it within the pouch, where it 
crawls about until it touches and instinctively takes hold of one 
of the threadlike teats. 
The minute creature, 
soft, blind, and naked, 
has as yet no properly 
formed mouth, but in- 
stead a temporary ar- 
rangement of muscles 
by which it clings 
automatically to the 
nipple. It cannot 
suck, and is nourished 
by the mother forcing 
jets of milk down its 
throat ; and lest this 
should choke its 
breathing, its wind- 
pipe is extended up 
to a junction with 
the nostrils, which 
state of things con- 
tinues for several . 
weeks, or until the 
animal is able to 

some extent to shift for itself. It then wakes up, stirs about, 
and leaves the pouch now and then, but returns to it for 
nursing, sleeping, and protection when alarmed, until finally it 
departs altogether. 

This arrangement, with which many minor peculiarities are 
associated, was long regarded as more primitive than the 

489 




A Rock Wallaby, with Young in Pouch. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

placental method of reproduction, although an advance upon 
the egg laying of the monotremes. Upon it was based the 
former separation of the marsupials as a subclass Metatheria , 
of equal rank with the Eutheria or higher mammals, on the one 
hand, and with the Prototheria or monotremes on the other. 
Since it has been found that in the bandicoots (Perameles) 
there exists a true allantoic placenta, this distinction breaks 
down, and naturalists are forced to the conclusion that instead 
of being an independent primitive stock, the marsupials "have 
sprung from a stock with an allantoic placenta," — that is to 
say, its origin was the same as that of all other groups of mam- 
mals except (as it now appears) the monotremes. When the 
divergence in the methods of reproduction began, paleontology 
gives little indication. It is a noteworthy fact that now the 
pouch is least perfect (occasionally absent) in those forms which 
are of most ancient and general type. 

Very characteristic of the group are the presence of two detached bones 
in the epipubic region; and also the fact that the hinder extremity of the 
lower jaw is always bent inward, or ''inflected," — a reptilelike feature 
of much weight in determining the affinities of the earlier fossil remains, 
which so often consist of only a half of a lower jaw. The brain of all mar- 
supials is "very small in proportion to the size of the head and body, while 
its external surface exhibits comparatively few foldings and convolutions, 
thus indicating that the brain power and general intelligence of these 
creatures are of a low grade." The experience of hunters and also of those 
who have made pets of many species, and found them gentle, amusing, and 
quick to learn, does not bear out this deduction. Doubtless, the mar- 
supials, like other animals, have quite as much intelligence as their several 
circumstances require. Many clever acts have been reported of them. 
Nevertheless, the type of brain, the character of the dentition and other 
features detailed by Parker and Haswell, 2 Beddard, 37 Lydekker, 258 and other 
specialists, show that the marsupials must be placed near the foot of the 
list in respect to organization. 

Many of the earliest mammals of which we have any certain 
information were of this race, and such were all of that division 
(polyprotodont) represented by the bandicoots. As far down in 

490 



TERTIARY MARSUPIALS 

the rocks as the Triassic, at the base of the Mesozoic series 
(dawn of the Age of Reptiles), are found in various parts of the 
world, including North America, 59 a few jawbones Mesozoic 
and teeth indicating that some of the diminutive Mammals - 
forerunners of the Mammalia — able by reason of their mi- 
nuteness to run and hide and nibble in a world filled with 
ravenous reptiles — were marsupial in organization. Some of 
these early types lasted into or through the Jurassic period, but 
are not met with subsequently as fossils, except in Australasia 
and Patagonia. After a long interval marsupials again appear, 
in the Middle Tertiary rocks of the Old World, and soon after 
in similar formations in the New World. During the later 
Tertiary marsupials flourished, as did all other orders in that 
heyday of mammalian life. Such details of this part of their 
history as seem to be called for will be given when I come to 
speak of the families ; at present I wish only to direct attention 
to the fact that in the past marsupials of all kinds were scattered 
all over the globe, whereas now, except the American opossums, 
no living member of the order is known outside of Australasia, 
where they constitute almost the entire mammalian fauna. 
This fact was very hard to explain until the discovery of many 
fossils supplied the key to a part, at least, of the puzzle. Dr. 
Lydekker 258 has sketched this interesting matter concfsely in 
the following sentences : — 

"Having their headquarters in Australia and New Guinea, where they 
form the dominant part of the mammalian fauna . . . the marsupials 
gradually diminish in number and importance in the islands of Distribu- 
te Northwest, being largely mingled in Celebes and the neigh- turn* 
boring islands with types of mammals characteristic of the Indian or Oriental 
region. If, however, we pass westward across the deep channel separating 
the island of Celebes from Borneo, or its continuation which runs between 
Lombok on the east and Bali, at the extremity of Java, on the west, we shall 
find all the islands lying to the westward of that line devoid of marsupials 
and possessing a mammalian fauna akin to that of India. The line of the 
channel in question is, therefore, evidently a very important one as regards 

491 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

distributional zoology ; and since this importance was first demonstrated 
and explained by the great explorer and naturalist, Dr. A. R. Wallace, it 
is now by common consent appropriately denominated 'Wallace's Line.' 
To the eastward marsupials extend as far as New Ireland and the Solo- 
mon Islands, but they are unknown in Polynesia proper, as, indeed, 
they are in New Zealand, where, by the way, there are no indigenous 
mammals at all." 

This localized condition of a great group is explained by the 
statement of scientists that Australia and its neighboring islands 
were connected with Asia previous to the Jurassic period, but 
since that time have been separated from it by the deep chan- 
nels along Wallace's Line ; at that time Australia seems to have 
been much more extensive than at present, embracing within it's 
mainland Tasmania, New Caledonia, and other present islands. 
It is a fair inference that previous to and during the Jurassic 
period Australia, as a part of the Asiatic continent, became 
peopled with the only mammals then in existence — the small 
primitive marsupials. Then the island- continent was cut off, 
and they were left to work out their destiny undisturbed by any 
immigration of alien competitors or destructive enemies. To 
this fortunate isolation, perhaps more than to anything else, 
they owe their immeasurably long survival, for before the close 
of the next era the influences and competition abroad in Europe 
and Asia had killed off all the marsupials that had remained 
there. A similar fate seems to be slowly overtaking the long- 
preserved Australian remnant, apart from anything man is 
doing. There is evidence of the existence during the Pleistocene 
of many now extinct forms of kangaroos and wombats, by the 
side of which the largest existing species would be as dwarfs. 
"The cause of this universal extinction (for universal it is) of 
the most gigantic mammals throughout the world soon after 
man made his appearance on the earth is one of those problems 
which has not yet received a satisfactory answer, as not even a 
glacial period could have made a clean sweep of the whole 
globe." Such is the substance of the present view. 

492 



ORIGIN OF DISTRIBUTION 

There is this to be said, however, at this point: It is a possibility that 
this whole matter of the spread of primitive marsupials (and of some other 
of the older types) has been viewed " wrong end to." Vari- Antarctic 
ous facts and indications point to the probability that the Origin? 
Southern Hemisphere received its animal life first from original centers of 
birth and distribution in the South Polar region, then mild and fruitful 
in climate. If this were so, then the adjacent Australian country would 
have become populous first, and the spread of marsupials would have 
been onward into Asia and Europe, until the more distant were cut off by 
the water gap opened early in the Cretaceous era along Wallace's Line ; 
and the early disappearance of this race from the mainland would be 
more readily understood than on the supposition that it originated there. 
Such a hypothesis (direct evidence of which must always remain hidden for 
the most part under the antarctic ice) would also explain the curious fact 
that the only marsupials now living elsewhere than in Australasia are in 
South America, one species, our opossum, ranging north to the central 
United States. Fossil remains of primitive marsupials abound in the early 
Tertiary rocks of Patagonia, and by the time of the Oligocene opossums 
had spread over all North America and Europe. The notable faunal and 
floral resemblance in general beween Australia and South America, in- 
creasing as it is traced backward in geologic history, can be explained only 
by some sort of former land connection now submerged, presumably ant- 
arctic. The great objection to this hypothesis is a negative one; namely, 
that thus far no fossil forms of Mesozoic age have been found in Australia. 

It is in suggesting such large thoughts as this that the marsupials 
become interesting, rather than in what they nowadays are or do. 

The marsupials present another engaging aspect in show- 
ing themselves to be an epitome of the whole mammalian 
world, and so illustrating on a large scale, and in Adapta- 
the most conspicuous way, how the necessity and 
habit of making a living in a particular manner brings about 
a suitable modification of structure, by such methods of adap- 
tation as Morgan 260 has elucidated. In Australia these ani- 
mals found themselves confined in a comparatively small, 
sharply limited space, including both plains and forests, with 
a fair uniformity of climate and products. There was an 
abundance of insect, reptilian, and bird life ; but no other mam- 

493 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

mals save a few bats and mice blown or drifted thither from 
the North; for the dingo, finally to prove so severe an enemy, 
was doubtless a late immigrant. In this complete freedom, 
and under favorable conditions, the marsupials soon became 
sufficiently diversified within their type to take advantage of 
all their opportunities, as in the more spacious outside 
world the more numerous other groups of mammals have been 
separated and fitted for a still wider variety of modes of life. 




Australian Beaver-rat. 



"We have, for instance," remarks the latest monographer of the order, 
"both terrestrial and arboreal types, while one form recently discovered 
passes an underground existence like the mole. Some, again, are carnivo- 
rous and others herbivorous; while among the former certain kinds live 
on flesh and others on insects, an equal diversity obtaining among the vege- 
table feeders, some of which live on roots, others on grasses or leaves, others 
on fruits, and yet others on honey or the juices of flowers. ... It is, how- 
ever, very remarkable that not a single Australian representative of the 
order is aquatic in its habits, so that such an animal as a 'marsupial 
otter' does not exist in that region. The place in nature thus left 
vacant by the marsupials has been seized upon by the duckbill, and 
by two members of the rodent order (otherwise so poorly represented 
in Australia), of which the best known is commonly termed the 
'beaver-rat.'" 

A valuable discussion of the Origin and Evolution of Marsupials, by 
B. A. Bensley, will be found in The American Naturalist for 1901. 266 

494 



KANGAROOS CONSIDERED 

The order Marsupialia is divisible into two sections : — 

I. Diprotodontia — with numerous incisors. Kangaroos, phalangers, 
and wombats; herbivorous; specialized and recent. 

II. Polyprotodontia — with rarely more than two incisors. Bandicoots, 
pouched mice, and opossums; carnivorous; generalized and ancient. 

The kangaroos stand at the head of the list, and are the 
largest, most highly developed, and familiar of their race. 
They form a family (Macropodidae) which is spread Kanga- 
over both Australia and New Guinea, and includes roos * 
over fifty species. While the majority inhabit open grassy 
plains, others brushy districts and rocks, and a few dwell in 
trees, the kangaroos proper include half a dozen of the largest 
kinds, the commonest of which is the great gray "boomer" 
or " forester," of the colonists, whose discovery in 1770 aston- 
ished Captain Cook and his men, and which was described 
at length by Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist of the expedition. 
This kangaroo, which occurs all over Australia, Tasmania, 
and New Guinea, stands four to five feet tall, with a tail thirty 
to thirty-six inches long; but this size is considerably exceeded 
by that of the red or woolly kangaroo, of eastern and south- 
ern Australia. Furthermore, fossil remains show that in the 
Pleistocene era kangaroos far bigger than even these existed 
there in numerous extinct species, — one, for instance, whose 
skull alone measured nearly a yard in length. One of the 
best accounts of kangaroos ever written is that by Henry Wheel- 
wright (under the pen name "An Old Bushman") 261 which 
in part is quoted below : — 

"The singular form of the kangaroo is doubtless familiar to all who are 
likely to look into these pages; it is one of the few animals whose habits 
are strictly terrestrial, which, although by nature furnished 
with four legs, use only the two hind ones as organs of pro- 
gression. ... In form the hind leg is similar to that of a hare, and 
when in an upright position the kangaroo rests on its hind feet and haunches 
after the manner of a squirrel ; the tail stretched out at full length along the 
ground, not, as I have seen it represented in a picture, curled up like that 

495 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

of a rat, for the kangaroo cannot bend its tail. When running, it springs 
from the ground in an erect position, propelled by its powerful hind legs 
and balanced by its tail, holding its short fore arms well into the chest, 
after the manner of a professional runner. Thus it bounds lightly and 
easily along, clearing any obstacles such as trees and even low fences in its 
stride. I never fairly measured one of these strides or springs, but I am 




Red or Woolly Kangaroo. 

certain, when hard-pressed, an 'old man' or 'flying doe' will clear nearly 
ten yards at a spring. The long tail materially assists them in running, 
and its measured thump may be heard on the ground long before the kanga- 
roo itself appears in sight in the thick forest.* 

"The countenance is mild and placid, but, like the sheep, we rarely see 
two exactly alike. The eye is bright ; the nostrils not very wide ; the ears 
large and pricked; and many of the males have a marked Roman nose, 
like that of an old ram. In bush parlance, the old male kangaroo is called 
an 'old man'; the young female a 'flying doe'; and the young one, till 
eight or ten months old, a 'joey.' The weight of a full-grown doe or 



* Whether or not this is correct is a matter of dispute. That the tail is a sup- 
port when the animal is at rest or walking slowly is certain; but good observers 
insist that it is held clear of the ground when the animal is leaping at speed, and 
say no trace of its touching appears when the kangaroo races across soft ground. 

496 



HABITS OF GREAT KANGAROO 

young buck, just killed, will vary up to about 120 lbs. Some of the 'old 
men ' reach to an immense size, and I have often killed them over 2 cwt. 

"In habits the kangaroo much resembles both the sheep and the fallow 
deer. Timid and shy, their senses of sight, hearing, and smell are most 
acute. Like the hare, they appear unable to see an object Habits and 
directly in front of them when running; at least I have often Food. 
stood still and shot one down as it came running straight up to me in the 
open forest. It is not a ruminating animal, and the four long front teeth, 
two in each jaw, are sharp, flat, and double-edged, peculiarly adapted for 
cutting or browsing ; and the thick blunt crushing molars betoken a purely 
herbivorous animal. They are very gregarious, and are always to be met 
with in smaller or larger droves. I have often seen as many as 150 in a 
drove, and our general mobs used to average 50 or 60. After the rutting 
season, the 'old men' will often draw away from the mobs and retire by 
themselves to the thickest scrub. Each drove frequents a certain dis- 
trict and has its particular camping and feeding grounds. The mobs 
do not appear to mix, and when the shooter once obtains a knowledge 
of the country, he has no difficulty in planting himself for a shot. Their 
camping grounds are generally on some open timbered rise, and they have 
well-trodden runs from one ground to another. They feed early in the morn- 
ing and at twilight, and I think also much by night. . . . The meat is dark in 
color, soon dries, and in appearance and taste is similar to poor doe venison. 

"The kangaroo lies up by day during the hot summer weather, in damp, 
thickly scrubbed gullies, in the winter on dry, sandy rises. Here, unless 
sturbed, they will remain quiet for hours; and it is a pretty sight to watch 
a mob camped up, some of them playing with each other, some quietlv 
nibbling the young shrubs and grass, or basking in the sun half asleep on 
their sides. About Christmas the young ones appear to leave their mothers' 
sides, and congregate in mobs by themselves. I have seen as many as 
fifty running together, and very pretty they looked. The kangaroo is a 
very clean animal. Both sexes seem to keep together, and, except in the 
rutting season, when desperate battles take place between the old males, 
they appear to live at all times in a state of domestic felicity. Like sheep, 
they can be driven in almost any direction that suits the driver, and, . . . like 
sheep, they always follow a leader. Their principal food appears to be 
the tender sprouts of small shrubs and heather, quite as much as grass; 
but there is a small kind of spike grass, brown on the under side, called 
the kangaroo grass, to which they are very partial. They will also come 
at night into the small bush inclosures, and nibble off the young blades of 
wheat, oats, etc. 

2K 497 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"Although harmless and inoffensive when unmolested, nature has fur- 
nished the kangaroo with a dreadful weapon of defense in the powerful 
hind claw, with which it can rip up a dog, like the tusk of a boar; and I 
have seen a large kangaroo take up a powerful dog in its fore claws, bear- 
fashion, and try to bite it. I never but once had one turn on me, and this 
was an old male which I had knocked down, and when I went up to it on 
the ground, it sprung up and came at me ; it luckily fell from exhaustion 
as I stepped back. Like deer, when wounded, they will often take to water, 
and, if they get a dog in their claws at such a time, always try to drown it. 
But I do not believe in the fiction that they will carry a dog to a water hole 
for that purpose." 

The smaller kangaroos are called " wallabies" or "brush" 

kangaroos, since they frequent scrub jungle and rocky places 

rather than open plains. These smaller species 

Wallabies. . \ v v 

furnish most of the leather and furs sent to mar- 
ket, and also the best venison; their skins are exported in 
vast quantities (350,000 were disposed of in the London sales 
of 1905), yet certain species remain numerous. There are 
also other wallabies, as the rock wallabies (Petrogale) of cen- 
tral Australia, which leap and climb about their rough resorts 
with remarkable agility, fleeing to deep holes when pursued. 
"When on precipitous cliffs they ascend the rocks in groups, 
jumping from side to side, and alighting on such small ledges 
that it seems almost impossible for them to obtain foothold. 
During the day they remain concealed in caves and holes from 
which they issue forth at evening, while on moonlight nights they 
may be seen abroad at all hours . . . they also have the power 
of easily ascending the sloping trunks of trees. " 

A genus (Onychogale) of similar mountain dwellers is dis- 
tinguished by having a horny nail on the tip of the tail. A 
third genus is that of the hare- wallabies (Lagorchestes), of 
which Gould 262 gives some interesting notes. 

"I usually found it solitary and sitting alone on a well-formed seat under 
stalks of a tuft of grass on the open plains. For a short distance its fleet- 
ness is beyond that of all others of its group that I have had an opportunity 

498 



DORCA AXD RAT KANGAROOS 



or coursing. Its powers of leaping are also extraordinary. While out on 
the plains of South Australia I started a hare kangaroo before two fleet 
dogs. After running to a distance of a quarter of a mile, it suddenly doubled 
and came back to me, the dogs following close to its heels. I stood per- 
fectly still, and the animal had arrived within twenty feet before it observed 
me, when, to my astonishment, instead of branching off to the right or to 
the left, it bounded clear over my head, and, on descending to the ground, 
I was able to make a successful shot. ... It is strictly nocturnal." 

The dorca kangaroos (Dorcopsis) of New Guinea form a 
transition from the ground-running kinds to the tree climbers 
of that island and north- 
ern Australia, whose fore 
arms are relatively long in 
adaptation to their arbo- 
real habits; the Queens- 




Jerboa Rat Kanga- 
roo. 

"Their appearance," 
says Gould, " when 
leaping toward their 
nests with their tails loaded with 
grasses, is exceedingly amusing." 
It is an interesting fact that our 
North American opossums use 
their tails in the same way. 

land species is notably pretty in its blended colors, — golden 
brown and white, with black-gloved hands and feet. Add- 
ing the thicket-loving " banded" kangaroo of West Australia, 
we complete the catalogue of this subfamily. 

To another group belong the diminutive rat kangaroos, 
which are ratlike in form, colors, and manners, running rather 
than leaping, and dwelling among "scrub" and Rat Kan- 
grass, scratching the ground all day in search of the s aroos - 
roots upon which they feed, and making havoc in the fron- 
tiersman's potato patches. Several of them have prehensile 

499 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

tails, which they use apparently only to carry to their intricate 
underground homes the long grass of which they make their 
beds. They associate in "towns" of connected burrows like 
a rabbit warren. Closely related but more active in its habits, 
being a tree climber, and more miscellaneous in its fare, which 
includes insects and worms, is the musk kangaroo, whose body 
exhales a strong odor. 

We come now to a distinct family, the phalangers, which 
the Australians "persist in misnaming 'opossums.' " This 
Phaian- family is widespread, and is regarded as representing 
gers * the most ancient type of diprotodont marsupials. 

"In their modes of life," Lydekker remarks, "the phalangers and their 
allies are essentially arboreal creatures, the great majority of them being 
highly assisted in their climbing by their highly prehensile tail. Some, 
however, have 'gone one better' than this, and have developed large para- 
chutelike expansions of skin from the sides of the body, by means of which 
they are able to take long flying leaps from bough to bough, and thus from 
tree to tree. And it may be mentioned here as a somewhat remarkable 
circumstance, that the different groups of these flying-phalangers, like their 
analogues, the flying-squirrels, have developed their parachutes, inde- 
pendently of one another, from distinct groups of their non-volant 
cousins. . . . While the great majority of the members of the family 
are purely vegetable feeders, subsisting chiefly on leaves and fruit, a few 
feed either entirely or partially on insects, while others have taken 
to a diet of flesh." 

Entitled to first notice is that quaint little creature, the "na- 
tive bear" or koala, whose portrait sufficiently describes him, 
when I add that he is about 32 inches long, and is gray with 
whitish under parts, rump, feet, and ears. Like the sloth, 
of which his sluggishness reminds one, he spends his days 
asleep in a tall tree top, or lazily feeding upon eucalyptus 
shoots, but at night descends and prowls about, scratching 
up edible roots. These comical little chaps have a single 
addition each spring to the family, and it is toted about for a 
long time by the mother, clinging to the fur of her back while 

500 



KOALA AND CUSCUS 



she scrambles through the gum tops. Its flesh is good to eat 
and its hide tans into excellent leather. 

Somewhat similar in habits, but more lemurlike in appear- 
ance and disposition, are the queer cusciises, several species 




Koala, or Australian " Native Bear." 

of which inhabit northern Australia, New Guinea, and the 
islands west to Celebes, where they were met and described 
by both Wallace 31 and Forbes. 3 They are about the size 
and shape of ferrets, have dense woolly fur, and a tendency 
toward piebald coloring, which gives them the name "tiger 
cat." Like the koalas, they dwell in tree tops, feed on leaves 
and the like, and sleep in a decayed hollow; and the natives 
of the Moluccas, at least, hunt them to eat. 

Of similar habits are the typical phalangers, of which the 
best known is the common one, always called in Australia 
"opossum," — an odd instance of the travels of an American 
Indian word. It is of the soft, richly colored skins, 80 to 
120 sewed together, of this and some related species, that the 

501 



THE Li "* OF MAMMALS 

famous opossum rugs are made ; and so numerous and pro- 
lific are these animals, in spite of the fact that three millions 
or more of their hides are consumed annually (2,500,000 in 
London alone, during 1905), these phalangers are still in 
thriving abundance. The common "opossum" is about the 
bigness of a cat, and lives mainly in peppermint gums, whose 
aromatic leaves are its favorite food, and so taint its flesh that 
nobody but a blackfellow cares to eat it; but some of the 
smaller " ring- tailed " phalangers are said to be excellent on 




The Common " Opossum," or Vulpine Phalanger, of Australia. 

the table. Wheelwright 261 gives a very full account of the ani- 
mal, and tells us that when one is shot it will often hang by 
the grip of its prehensile tail long after life has departed. 
Protective laws have recently restricted the killing of them. 

It was to be expected that among creatures of these squir- 
rel-like ways some would grow to have a squirrel- like form. 

This has happened, and they have added to the 
Phaian- large balancing and seizing tail the faculty of flight, 

as has been intimated. Thus we have flying- 
phalangers. One is the dark green taguan or "tooan" of 
Queensland and Victoria, about 17 inches long, with a 
tail measuring 20 inches, noted for its piercing scream 
when alarmed or in flight. Another well known is the yel- 
low-bellied, of which Bennett wrote so particularly in his 

502 



THE SUGAR SQUIRREL 

excellent book ; 263 he raised a captive to be a most engaging 
pet and says : — 

"It holds a raisin or almond in its forepaws, licking and nibbling it. 
It is often seen lying on its back at the bottom of the cage when feeding, 
and when drinking milk holds the small vessel containing it between its 
forepaws, lapping like a kitten. It is evident from the fondness of this 
animal for sweets that, when the eucalypti are in flower, it subsists upon 
honey, which the blossoms yield in very large quantity (the honey is in 
such abundance as to afford subsistence to honey -eating parrots and other 
birds, as well as to these animals, and also to myriads of insects of various 
species). When these have disappeared it lives upon nuts and young 
foliage, and, probably, as is usual with honey-eating animals, also upon 
insects." 

Seen and loved everywhere in New South Wales is another 
species, the sugar squirrel (Petaurus sciureus), one of the most 
beautiful of mammals, as may be seen by the colored plate 
herewith. It is only about nine inches long, plus nine or ten 
inches of evenly bushy tail; and its fur has so exquisitely soft 
and silky a quality that it is superior even to chinchilla. Many 
are the stories told of its astonishingly long and graceful flights 
in the moonlight among the honeysuckles, which are its favor- 
ite haunt ; and the people are satisfied that it has power to 
change its course to a certain extent in mid air. They relate 
how, on one occasion, one which had the run of a ship at sea 
leaped from a masthead just as the vessel gave a great lurch. 
The squirrel's course would undoubtedly have landed it over- 
board, but it was seen to swerve in mid flight and alight safely 
on deck. All this sounds very much as if said of American 
flying-squirrels; and the two kinds of animals look and be- 
have as nearly alike as possible, though developed on opposite 
sides of the globe and in separate groups. The "flying-mice" 
(Acrobates) are miniature volant phalangers, no larger than 
house mice. 

Equally striking is the resemblance of their smaller cousins, 

503 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

the dormouse phalangers, to the European dormice both in 
appearance and habits, except that they inhabit tree tops. 
Another phalanger of great interest is the long-snouted tait 
of West Australia, which lives mainly on honey extracted from 
the tubular flowers so common in that country, and blooming 
on one or another tree throughout the year. To this end it has 
acquired its long nose and a tongue which can be thrust far 




Wombats, called by Australians " Native Bear." 



out of its mouth and is roughened toward its tip and capable 
of being curled into a scoop. Such fare implies the taking 
of a good many insects sticking to the liquid sweet; but all 
the phalangers are to some extent fond of grubs, and quick 
at grasping insects that fall in their way. Very different ani- 
mals are the wombats (Phascolomyidae) of southern Australia 
and Tasmania. 



Wombats. 



: Heavily made and short-limbed creatures, with incisor teeth curiously 
resembling those of the rodent mammals, the wombats may be 
regarded as filling in Australia the place occupied in the north- 
ern hemisphere by the marmots, and in South America by the viscachas. 

5°4 



WOMBATS AND MOLE 

. . . Like most marsupials the wombats are essentially nocturnal animals, 
remaining concealed throughout the day in their subterranean quarters, 
whence they issue forth at night to 'feed. . . . Their food consists partly 
of grass and other herbage, but mainly of roots, which their powerful 
front teeth are admirably adapted to gnaw. From specimens kept in con- 
finement it appears that the female usually produces from three to four 
young at a birth, which are tended with great care and solicitude, until 
such time as they are able to shift for themselves. By no means active 
in their movements, and shuffling along with an awkward gait which calls 
to mind the progression of a young bear, the wombats are gentle and some- 
what stupid in disposition." 

It may be added that the wombats, like the koala, have cheek pouches, 
and both animals store temporarily masses of food, and are otherwise of 
considerable likeness. Nearly 130,000 "wombat" skins were sold at the 
fur auctions in London alone in 1905. 

Last of the diprotodonts arc the two small species of opos- 
sum rat (raton runcho) of Colombia and Ecuador, the sole 
survivors of an almost extinct family (Epanorthidae), repre- 
sented by many fossil remains in the Miocene rocks about 
Santa Cruz, Patagonia. The foremost peculiarity is that the 
toes of the hind feet are wholly free, not somewhat webbed 
as in the kangaroos and all other diprotodonts. Their pouch 
is almost rudimentary, their food is not vegetable, but mainly 
birds and their eggs, insects and the like ; and all together these 
small American cousins of the phalangers stand at the foot 
of the list. With them we easily pass to the bandicoots, and 
so take up the Polyprotodontia. 

The distinction regards the teeth, which here, by numerous 
incisors, strong canines, and sharp cheek teeth, in- p iy P ro- 
dicate a flesh diet and predatory habits. The den- todonts - 
tition of a bandicoot is much like that of a shrew, and an 
opossum has teeth like a weasel's. This implies similar tastes 
and methods; and within this section will be found insect 
hunters as active, and beasts of prey as fierce, as any developed 
outside the marsupial world. 

Before taking up the group, however, a word should be 

505 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

said about the marsupial "mole" discovered in 1891. It lives 
in an arid part of southern Australia, is a burrowing creature, 
"Mole." has a silk y coat > P ale goWen red, and in many 
ways is a most striking counterpart of the South 
African "golden mole," which is no more a true mole than 
is this, but is an insectivore. Interest in the close similarity 
between them, internal as well as outward, deepens when it 




Australian Marsupial Mole. 



is added that the Tertiary rocks of Argentina contain a fossil 
insectivore (Necrolestes) closely allied to the Cape species. 
The marsupial mole is not only blind, but its eyes have been 
more completely lost by degeneration than in any other known 
case; and its anatomy abounds in curious adaptations to an 
underground existence evidently antique. 

The true bandicoots are animals like bush rats, from nine to 
sixteen inches long, plus a tapering tail, which inhabit wooded 
Bandi- places, some on the high, dry, interior mountains, 
coots. an( j other S p ec } es m the sou thern swamps. Some 

are handsome; but in outlines and colors they vary greatly. 
All make a compact nest of grass, etc., looking like a mere 
heap of rubbish in a hollow of the ground, in which a family 
hides until the coming of dusk arouses it from its dozing and 
sends it forth to feed. In this, and in their nocturnal digging 
of bulbs to add to their diet of leaves, fruit, mice, insects, worms, 

506 



BANDICOOTS AND DASYURES 

etc., they closely resemble in mode of life our American wood 
rats (Neotoma). Krefft 264 describes a happy captive which 
became an adept in mice catching; and says it would tumble 
the mice about with its fore paws, break their hind legs, and 
then, as a rule, eat only the head. Less typical and carnivo- 
rous are the rabbit bandicoots, which, although very long- 
eared, owe their name more to their harelike manners, food, 
and taste, than to similarity of appearance; and the out-of- 
the-way, now rare, "pig- footed" bandicoot of southern Aus- 
tralia, which also has much the habits of a rabbit, but makes 
grass nests and subsists largely on insects, never, apparently, 
hunting mice, as do the bandicoots proper. All the bandi- 
coots are regarded as pests by the Australian farmers, because 
they dig and tunnel in their fields after worms and roots, and 
so do the same sort of mischief as our ground squirrels. One 
remarkable feature in the bandicoot family (Peramelidae) is 
the fact that the hind feet are almost precisely like those of 
kangaroos, although it is probable that this feature was inde- 
pendently acquired, and that the bandicoots are an offshoot 
from the next family, the dasyures, rather than near relatives 
of the kangaroos, to which they bear a greater outward resem- 
blance. 

The dasyures (Dasyuridae) are the marsupial beasts of prey. 
The limbs are of nearly equal length, the feet of the ordinary 
digitigrade type, the dentition thoroughly carnivo- 
rous (doglike), the digestive apparatus fitted for 
flesh food, and the form and habits much like the wolves, 
civets, and weasels of northern climes; but all are pouched, 
and, as in the bandicoots, the pouch opens backward. The 
foremost of this predatory group, and the largest, is a ferocious 
creature known as "Tasmanian devil." It is uniformly black 
and shaggy, has a head somewhat like a bear, with jaws and 
teeth strong enough to crush big bones ; and in size, strength, 
and diabolism is an imitation of the wolverine. It lives in 

5°7 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

self-dug burrows like a badger, whence it prowls at night, 
doing immense damage in poultry yard and sheepfold, and 
few dogs have the nerve to face it ; but now it has been almost 
exterminated, and is likely to be gone before several unknown 
points as to its breeding, etc., have been learned. Harris, 
who first described the creature in 1808, said they were gladly 
eaten by the early settlers of Van piemen's Land, tasting like 
veal, and were easily taken in meat-baited traps, but proved 
"untamably savage," two captives that he kept fighting con- 
tinually. "Their quarrels began as soon as it was dark (as 
they slept all day) and continued throughout the night almost 
without intermission, accompanied by a kind of hollow bark- 
ing not unlike that of a dog." A bigger and worse "devil" 




A Dasyure, the Tasmanian Devil. 

infested the Australian mainland in the recent past, as we 
know from bones in caves. 

The dasyures proper, or "native cats," consist of half a 
dozen kinds of active little carnivores, which fill the role 
there of our northern martens and weasels. Some are Aus- 
tralian, others Tasmanian, others denizens of the Papuan 
Islands ; and most of their time is spent in trees, although some 
are more fond of hunting amid rocks and brush. None is 

508 






AUSTRALIAN "NATIVE CATS' 



larger than a small house cat, and with their sharp muzzles, 
brightly colored and usually spotted coats, and long, orna- 
mented tails, they remind one of civets. This is especially 




Common Dasyure, or Australian " Native Cat." 

true of the common little Australian one. Naturally bird 
hunters and nest robbers, all are pests to farmers interested 
in chickens or pigeons. Their haunts and habits are much 
the same as those of a weasel; but they are more apt to take 
to a tree for refuge when chased by a dog. They have a wea- 
sel's reckless boldness and bloodthirst. 

" They prefer to take up their abode with civilized man when they find 
out that he keeps plenty of meat about his habitation or rears poultry. 
They are very savage for their size, and five of them kept in a cage without 
sustenance for a day only had almost reduced themselves to the state of 
the famous tabbies of Kilkenny. They are stubborn in the extreme, and 
appear to care about nothing. We have noticed them to come quite uncon- 
cerned into a tent at night, and take up a cosy place near the chimney, 
from which a fire stick only could dislodge them." 264 

Near relatives of these alert marauders are a large number 
of tiny dasyures of the genus Phascologale, which are widely 
scattered and in places very numerous. The Australians call 
them "pouched mice," for none are as large as a rat, but they 
are really more like the Malayan tree shrews, scrambling 
about the bark and branches after the insects which form 

5°9 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

their chief diet, and nesting in their hollows. The larger ones 
kill eagerly such birds and mice as they can catch; and all 
make pretty pets. Besides these several other species behave 
like shrews, living wholly on the ground ; and one of the larger 
desert kinds (Antechinus), whose principal enemies are hawks 
and owls, carries the similitude farther by leaping when it moves 
just like the true jumping-shrews of the deserts of North Africa. 




Banded Australian Ant-eater. 



Banded 
Ant- 
eater. 



There seems no end to the way in which circumstances have 
produced in these Australian marsupials forms and aptitudes 
like those of the placental mammals elsewhere exposed to 
similar conditions of soil, climate, etc. 

Another example is found in the last of this family, the 
banded ant-eater, which has the general look of a large 
reddish squirrel irregularly banded with white 
across the back, digs open ant-hills, and then licks 
up their denizens by means of a long glutinous 
tongue — an adaptation in structure like that of the true ant- 
eaters, just as their needs and pursuits agree. Its habits other- 
wise are little known, for it is rare and local. Another inter- 
esting fact about this animal is that its teeth, which are very 
small and delicate, though numerous (54), are unlike those 
of any other marsupial, and exhibit (as also does the palate) 
suggestive points of resemblance to the dentition of the mono- 

510 



TASMAXIAX WOLF 



tremes (see page 523); they more closely resemble, however, 
the type of teeth seen in the fossil jaws (the likeness extends 
to the jaw bone itself) of such most primitive relics as Amphi- 
therium of the Jurassic, which is among the most antique of 
recognizable mammalian remains. It may be that this little 
Australian ant-eater is a 
direct survivor from the 
Secondary fauna. 

An allied but separated 
group is represented by the 
Tasmanian "zebra wolf" 
or thylacine. This much- 
dreaded beast is a long-bod- 
ied, short-legged, long-tailed, 
dog-headed animal, with the 
look of an ancient creodont 
and the manners of a modern 
wolf. As will be seen by the 
photograph, the head is 
large, the jaw powerful, the 
gape of the mouth extending 
back behind the eye, which 
is large, prominent, and very 
dark. The incisors do not 
correspond with those of our carnivores, being eight in the 
upper and six in the lower jaw. The canines are strong 
and fully an inch in length. A full-grown one is nearly 
six feet long to the end of the tail; and the coat is short, 
close, and of a dusky-tawny hue, marked upon the hinder 
part with about 16 blackish transverse bands. Its home 
is Tasmania, where it lurks among the rocky ravines of the 
interior mountains, sometimes as high as the snow line. When 
the island first began to be colonized it was numerous, finding 
plenty of native prey; but as soon as sheep were introduced 

5" 




Copyright, X. Y. Zool. Society. Sanborn, Phot. 

Thylacine, or Tasmanian Wolf. 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

it naturally took to killing them,' and thus aroused a war of ex- 
termination. So well armed are its great jaws and so courageous 
is its fury that even a pack of dogs will refuse to attack an old 
"wolf" with his back to the wall. They rarely show them- 
selves by daylight, and then seem slow, dull-witted, and half 
blind, but make their forays at night, each hunting alone, and 
with no more voice than a low growl. A few have been caught 
alive and soon adapt themselves to captivity, so that all the 
larger zoological gardens now exhibit them and even cause 
them to breed. Mr. R. Gunn, who sent a female to the Lon- 
don " Zoo," wrote of her as follows: — 

" The present one, in giving suck to its young, used to lie down like a dog, 
the skin of the pouch being thrown back so as to admit of the young ones 
getting easily at the teats. When alarmed, the young ones crawled in with 
their backs downwards, the mother assisting by lowering her hind quarters 
to facilitate them getting in, and by also placing her rump against the side 
of the cage to give the cubs a purchase with their hind legs against the cage, 
and thus push themselves in." 

A word or two here about the pouch. In the kangaroos and their kin 
this organ is most highly developed and longest used by the young. As 
Relation tne li ne * s approached separating the diprotodonts from the 
° f p 011 ? • polyP r °todonts, the opening of the pouch changes from front 
Develop- to rear, and when the smaller dasyures are reached it is seen 
ment. to ^ e verv res t r icted and to open by a slit straight downward; 

and the kittens make little use of it after once getting out. In the pouched 
mice, despite their name, it is so small as practically to be wanting; and in 
Antechinus and the ant-eater there is no pouch at all, the teats being pro- 
tected merely by the long hair among which the young cling until they 
mature. This deficient condition characterizes the opossums, with two 
specialized exceptions. These very exceptions, in the opinion of Dr. 
Lydekker, "demonstrate that this organ is primitively an essential char- 
acteristic of marsupials, and not one that has been specially developed to 
suit the exigencies of the various modes of life of the Australian members 
of the order. Consequently those forms, like the majority of the opossums 
and the banded ant-eaters, which have either no pouch or merely a rudi- 
ment thereof, may be safely assumed to have lost that organ through spe- 
cialization. The reason of the loss of such an organ, which appears so 

5!2 



ANCESTRY OF THYLACINES 

admirably adapted for the protection of young born in the imperfect and 
helpless condition characteristic of all the marsupials, is hard to divine." 
Beddard's "Mammalia" 37 (pages 14-18) should be consulted for fuller 
treatment of this subject. 

The origin of the pouch, as an advantageous feature, is probably 
due to the arboreal habits which are believed M to have been character- 
istic of all the ancestral marsupials, the coming down to earth (assumption 
of terrestrial habits) being a comparatively modern matter affecting only 
certain groups of this class. 

In regard to the early history of this group, Dr. W. D. 
Matthew writes me as follows : — 

"Recent studies by W. J. Sinclair have shown that the thylacine, 
although now found only in Australia and Tasmania, is the last survivor 
of a group of carnivorous marsupials which inhabited South America during 
the Tertiary period, and took the place in that continent of the true Car- 
nivora of the northern world. Since none of these animals, living or ex- 
tinct, has been found in any of the northern continents, it appears most 
reasonable to suppose that the thylacines reached Australia from South 
America (or vice versa) through a former land connection by way of the 
Antarctic regions, an hypothesis supported by many other resemblances 
between the animals and plants, recent and extinct, of the three southern 
continents. About the middle of the Tertiary period Africa became con- 
nected with Europe, and at a later epoch South America with North Amer- 
ica, the south polar land connections having in the meanwhile sunk below 
the ocean. The more active, powerful, and intelligent carnivorous ani- 
mals of the northern world were thus enabled to extend their range into 
the southern continents, and soon displaced and destroyed all their mar- 
supial predecessors in those regions, while Australia, still separated by 
ocean from the northern land masses, retained its ancient population of 
marsupial carnivores." 

The true opossums are a family (Didelphidae) related to 
the dasyures, but never represented in Australia. It is the low- 
est family in rank of organization and the one most 

. ,. r ■ 11 11 Opossums. 

ancient in lineage, for it seems to have become well 
established in the Cretaceous, and widely distributed throughout 
the northern world during that and the Eocene periods. No 
other marsupial group, so far as known, approaches this in 
2L 513 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



antiquity, save the banded ant-eaters; yet so little change has 
occurred that teeth from the Laramie formations of Wyoming 
are hardly distinguishable from those in the jaws of our 'pos- 
sum-up-a-gum-tree to-day. No wonder the quaint creature is 
hoary and wrinkled ; he is a very Methuselah among mammals, 
and looks it ! All opossums seem to have disappeared from 




The North American Opossum. 

Europe, however, before the close of the Miocene, but continued 
to survive numerously in South America, and that continent to- 
day is the headquarters of the race. They probably owe their 
long career, in competition with animals of so much higher 
grade, to their small size, forest life, nocturnal habits, ability to 
eat all sorts of food, and, most of all, to their great fecundity. 

With all this historical background, the gray, snarling, pil- 
fering, dunderheaded, and motherly opossum of our southern 
woods becomes respectable. You may make his acquaintance 

5H I2 



REPRODUCTION OF THE OPOSSUM 

from New York to Iowa and California and southward to Pata- 
gonia, and will note several varieties of tint in his ragged, 
"mussed-up" coat. He (and she) are almost as familiar in 
Dixie as rabbits, and have been laughed at in parlor, cabin, 
and camp ever since Captain John Smith reported among the 
wonders of Virginia : " The Opassom hath a head like a Swine, 
a Tayle like a Bat, as bigge as a Cat, and hath under her belly 
a Bag wherin she carrieth her young." Then there was an- 
other man, quoted in "Purchas His Pilgrimage" (London, 1617) 
who declared: "They have a monstrous deformed beast, whose 
fore part resembleth a Fox, the hinder part an Ape, excepting 
the feet which are like a man's ; beneath her belly she hath a 
receptacle like a purse, wherin she bestows her young, until 
they can shift for themselves, never coming out of this natural 
nest but to sucke." 

This must have been both startling and puzzling to the read- 
ers of that day, yet it was not so wide of the mark if we recall 
that then "monstrous" meant simply marvelous, and the like- 
ness of the feet to a man's referred to the plantigrade tracks 
they left. The statement that the young came out of the pouch 
to nurse was only the first of a long list of errors in respect to 
the strange reproductive processes of this little beast, which, it 
must be remembered, was the first marsupial with which natu- 
ralists became familiar, and that the early zoologists had little 
help from Australia in solving the problem. Dr. John Bach- 
man, who wrote the extended and excellent account of this ani- 
mal (as of most others) in Audubon and Bachman's "Quadru- 
peds," 90 appears to have been really the first to penetrate the 
mystery, or at any rate to make its explanation known ; and he 
did not learn it all. He tells us that 15 days elapse between 
conception and the birth of the young, and that they remain in 
the pouch about five weeks before they first begin to climb over 
their mother. They are then, to use Sharp's words, about the 
size of full-grown mice, and the dearest of wood babies. 

5*5 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

"They have sharp, pink noses, snapping black eyes, gray fur, and the 
longest, barest tails. I think that the most interesting picture I ever saw 
in the woods was an old mother opossum with eleven little young ones cling- 
ing to her. She was standing off a dog as I came up, and every one of the 
eleven was peeking out, immensely enjoying this first adventure. The quiz- 
zing snouts of six were poked out in a bunch from the cradle pouch, while 
the other five mites were upon their mother's back, where they had been 
playing Jack-and-the-beanstalk up and down her tail." 

An old number of The American Naturalist (September, 1886) contains 
a capital story of the wild creatures which used to come at night about the 
cabin of the writer, I. Lancaster, who had made a temporary hermit of 
himself in the South Florida wilds. By placing a strong light in the low 
window he could easily watch from behind it the creatures which nightly 
assembled to eat of the scraps thrown out to attract them. "This kind of 
lamplight scrutiny," he records, "was of never-failing interest. The ani- 
mals were fresh from the hand of nature and on their native heath. The 
opossums were particularly interesting; when several females with their 
broods were on hand, there occurred a mixing of families, for the mother 
which had secured a bone at once shook off her progeny while she ate it. 
Her discarded infants would fasten on the nearest female, and sometimes 
a single mother went about with four families of children hanging to her. 
When a fox appeared, the incumbered animal at once took to the bushes, 
the others covering her retreat with wide-open mouths which, with their 
serried rows of teeth, seemed indeed formidable. Reynard always respected 
this show of ivory, as the raccoons did also. But in spite of all the precau- 
tions taken by the mothers, a strict count of children after home was reached 
would show loss. When they were shaken off, one would be a little late in 
regaining a position of safety, and in the hurry consequent on the fox's 
arrival, this tardy scrambler would prove to be the one not fitted to survive. 
It left no legacy to its descendants, for it never had any." 

The young stay with their dams about two months ; nor are 
these little mothers ever long free from the burden and anxiety 
of a big family, for hardly has one litter dispersed than another 
arrives. Thus the multiplication of opossums is almost as 
rapid as that of mice or rabbits, and they form one of the main- 
stays in the menu of all the carnivores not only of our woods, 
but of the countries south of the United States. To attempt to 
relate the ways and means of the opossum in detail would far 

516 



HABITS OF THE OPOSSUM 

overtax my space. Let me better quote a summary by a keen 
old observer, Dr. Lincecum of Texas, and then pass on to a 
brief notice of that peculiar behavior which has given our lan- 
guage the expressive verb to play '"possum" : — 

"They dwell in hollow logs, stumps, and in holes at the root of trees," 
writes Lincecum in The American Naturalist -for September, 1872. 
"They do not burrow or prepare dens for themselves, but find such as 
are ready made. I have seen them carrying into their holes at the approach 
of cold weather considerable bundles of dry leaves rolled up in their tail [like 
rat kangaroos, — see page 499] ; they understand the signs of the coming 
spells of bad weather, and they prepare for it by making themselves a good 
warm bed. They do not hibernate, but are found out hunting in frosty 
weather. They possess but little caution. Hence they are often found 
in the poultry houses, chicken coops, smokehouses, and even in our dining 
rooms, rattling about in search of something to eat. I have often seen 
their tracks in the roads and paths, where they had traveled three or four 
miles to a farmyard, to which they had no doubt been directed by the crow- 
ing of the roosters. They will catch a grown hen and drag her off, squall- 
ing at the top of her voice, and will not abandon her until the dogs which 
have been aroused by the uproar have overtaken and begun cracking 
their bones. They will eat bacon, dry beef, carrion, any kind of fowl, 
rabbits, any sort of small game, and fruits of every variety. They vora- 
ciously devour the muskmelon, and several species of mushrooms; in 
short, they are nearly omnivorous. . . . During their rutting season the 
males are very rampant and belligerent. Numbers will collect around 
a female and fight like dogs." 

Often when this animal, or any of its tropical relatives, finds 
itself cornered or attacked, it will suddenly fall limp and dead ; 
"and when the opossum plays 'possum he invariably piaying 
draws back the gums from his glittering white teeth ossum - 
until he looks as if he might have been dead a month." You 
may roll him about with your foot, or pick him up and carry 
him away by the tail or offer him any indignity you please and 
he will "keep on savin' nuffin"; but don't turn your back on 
him or his little black shoe-button eyes will steal open and he 
will suddenly spring up and away ; and don't let your hand get 

5*7 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 



too near his jaws or a fierce bite is likely to reveal the savage 
beneath the actor. Foxes and a good many other animals will- 
play the same ruse, and ordinary folks have taken the thing 
for what it seems, and called it an instinctive feigning of death. 




S. M. Lottridge, Phot. 



Playing 'Possum. 



Others have asserted that it is really a case of being frightened 
into a paralysis, — that it is not pretense at all, but an actual 
swooning from terror. But those who best know the little beast 
cling to the old notion. 



"I have known the 'possum too long," exclaims Professor Sharp, "for 
a ready faith in his extreme nervousness, too long to believe him so hys- 
terical that the least surprise can frighten him into fits. He has a reason- 
able fear of dogs; no fear at all of cats; and will take his chances any 
night with a coon for the possession of a hollow log. He will live in the 
same burrow with other 'possums, with owls, — with anything in fact, — 
and overlook any bearable imposition; he will run away from everything^ 
venture anywhere, and manage to escape from the most impossible situa- 
tions. Is this an epileptic, unstrung, flighty creature ? Possibly ; but look 
at him. He rolls in fat ; and how long has obesity been the peculiar accom- 
paniment of nervousness?" 

518 



A GOOD HABIT GONE WRONG 



A more important question is: Of what good is the ruse? 
How many enemies are sufficiently deceived by it to go away 
and leave him undisturbed ? Would a cat, a wolf, or a big owl 
neglect to seize an opossum and eat him because he pretended 
death ? What do they care whether 
he is dead or not — if it is true, they 
have been saved some trouble. Lin- 
cecum states that in Texas "turkey 
buzzards will alight near where they 
find an opossum feeding in the 
woods, and running up on him will 
flap their wings violently over him 
a few times, when the opossum goes 
into a spasm, and the buzzards very 
deliberately proceed to pick out its 
exposed eyes and generally take a 
pretty good bite from its neck and 
shoulders; the opossum lying on 
its side all the time and grunting. 
I have twice seen a buzzard do as 
described." Beside this must be 
placed the universal testimony that 
a mother opossum will sit up and 
defend her babies against anything 

, ., . c . . P Copyrt., X. Y. Z. S. Sanborn, Phot. 

and everything, -no fainting for murine Opossum. 

her! (Is it, I wonder, only the 

roaming males who "play 'possum" ?) It is difficult to see 
how any animal, friend or foe, that comes near enough to 
cause an opossum to play dead, or fall into a fit, or whatever 
it is that he does do, and consequently comes near enough 
to smell the warmth and odor of the creature's body, could 
be deceived for a moment; yet if it neither deceives nor 
defends, of what service is the act? May it not be merely a 
survival of a practice, now obsolete, involuntary, and really 

5i9 




THE LLFE OF MAMMALS 

harmful, originating and apt in the remote history of this "last 
leaf" on the ancestral tree of American zoology, — a good 
habit gone wrong! 

In addition to the common opossum no less than 22 spe- 
cies are catalogued in Central and South America. Many of 
them are no larger than mice, — for example, the murine opos- 
sum, which strays across our southwestern border; others are 
little known, but all seem much alike in their manner of life. 
The notable exception is the yapock, a water-loving species 
about the size of a large rat, with webbed hind feet, and aquatic 
preferences. It inhabits the rivers from Guatemala to southern 
Brazil, is comparatively rare, and is believed to live chiefly on 
Crustacea, insects, and an occasional fish. "The female has a 
well-developed pouch, in which the young, usually five in num- 
ber, are carried for some time ; and it will be obvious that dur- 
ing that period the creature must refrain from entering the 
water. Later on the young accompany their parent to the river, 
and are exercised by her in swimming and in diving." 

This ends the list of eutherian mammals. 




Rabbit Bandicoot. 



520 



EGG-LAYING MAMMALS — Subclass, PROTOTHERIA: 
Order, MONOTREMATA 

There remain to be accounted for those strange, antique mam- 
mals, the duckbill and echidnas, which stand in a group infe- 
rior to and widely separated from the remainder of the class. Of 
their fossil history no evidences have been discovered beyond 
the most recent past (Pleistocene), yet there can be no doubt 
that they represent a very primitive type. Their anatomy, fully 
sketched and discussed in Beddard's 37 and other recent text- 
books, displays many very archaic features, some bearing a 
close resemblance to reptilian modes of structure. There is no 
question of their generally inferior place in classification; and 
hence comes their designation Prototheria ("primitive beasts") 
to take the place of the less precise name " Ornithodelphia. " 
They are often spoken of as " monotremes." 

Their most conspicuous peculiarity lies in the method of 
reproduction : — 

All animals begin as eggs ; and in all the lower forms of verte- 
brates (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds) the embryo is 
formed and remains until far advanced in growth 

Eggs. 

within the protective envelopes (shell) of the egg, 
which in most cases is dropped from the body of the parent at 
an early stage, and among the higher ranks is thereafter warmed 
and cared for until the embryo is prepared to come forth ; and 
this egg contains a quantity of food material (yolk, etc.). In 
placental mammals, however, the nutriment necessary for the 
growth of the embryo is supplied not by the egg but by the 
mother's blood. In implacental mammals (marsupials) a small 

521 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

amount of material is furnished by the egg, and when this is 
exhausted the embryo is voided, placed in a protective pouch 
and thereafter nourished and increased by milk forced into its 
system. Now in the Prototheria the egg is comparatively large, 
contains much food yolk, and in fact resembles that of a turtle, 
even to the parchmentlike shell ; and it is laid and brooded in a 
manner very similar to that of some sea birds, especially the 
penguins, until the embryo has utilized all its contents and is 
ready to come out — not as perfect as a young penguin would 
be, but far more advanced than a marsupial "larva." 

This process, then, is outside of the established order of 
mammalian reproduction, but is remarkable only because of 
its resemblance to the methods of the inferior vertebrates. 
Hence it is an indication of low and "generalized" organization 
and rank in the mammalian scale. Further indication of this 
is given in the fact that when the embryos come out of the eggs 
they are not able, as are infant reptiles, birds, and the like, to 
take general food, but must for a time subsist on milk like other 
mammals. The provision for nursing, however, in this group, 
is very imperfect; and for a full explanation of it such textr 
books as Parker and Haswell's " Zoology " 2 should be consulted. 
Briefly, instead of the milk- secreting glands opening at the sur- 
face in teats the skin of that part of the abdomen overlying 
them is thin and bare and shows no nipples at all; at the time 
when the young arrive this area will yield milk at two points in- 
dicated by tufts of hair, which presumably guide the sensitive 
nose of the half-witted youngster to the right place at which to 
suck. 

As might be expected, all the Prototheria are Australian ; nor 
is there evidence of their ever having existed in any other part 
of the world, unless it be conceded that the Mesozoic "mul'ti- 
tuberculates " were their ancestors. 

Existing representatives of this remarkable group are few, - — 
only the duckbill and the spiny ant-eaters. 



D UCKBII.L CHAR A CTERISTICS 



The duckbill (Ornithorhynchus) is an animal eighteen to 
twenty inches long, inhabiting the rivers of Australia, 

- . ° ° .. . . Duckbill. 

Tasmania, and New Guinea, which manifests its 

aquatic nature in its form, fur, and great paddling feet provided 

with a webbing two sizes too large. 

The skin is loose and thickly covered with glossy hair, having an under 
layer of soft, short, waterproof fur, like that of a beaver. The head is 
small and round, with small bright eyes, and no external ears, although 
the internal ears are perfectly developed, and the hearing acute; and in- 




Duckbill, Platypus, or Ornithorhynchus. 

stead of the muzzle, mouth, and teeth of an ordinary quadruped, the crea- 
ture is furnished with a bill like that of a duck, and incloses the jaws 
within an extremely sensitive naked skin, grayish in color, which is raised 
into a frill-like fold that protects the eyes when the animal is probing 
mud; and which in mounted specimens dries hard. The nostrils are at the 
extremity of the upper mandible; the lower mandible has transverse la- 
mellae, somewhat like the bill of a duck; and each jaw is furnished with 
two pairs of horny plates, serving the purpose of teeth for the adults; but 
true cheek teeth are present in young animals. The tongue is small, 
partly covered with horny spines, and may direct the food collected into 
two large cheek pouches, where it can be stored and conveniently carried 
to the burrow or other eating place. An interesting feature is the strong 
horny spurs on the heels of the male, which are movable and traversed 
by a minute canal opening at the point, and connected at the base with the 
duct from a large venom gland in the back part of the thigh. 

523 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

A duckbill spends its whole life in or near its chosen river, 
but with its companions is as shy and hard to get sight of as a 
beaver. Each pair digs and occupies a long burrow in the bank, 
entered beneath the water, and bedded in its chambered ex- 
tremity with grass, where they stay asleep through the daytime, 
and where the young are hatched. Bennett 263 gave the fullest 
account of their habits half a century ago. 

"The food consists of aquatic insects, small crustaceans and worms, 
which are caught under water, the sand and small stones at the bottom being 
turned over with the bill. The creatures appear at first to deposit what 
they have thus collected in their cheek pouches, and when these are filled 
they rise to the surface and quietly triturate their meal with the horny plates 
before swallowing it." This food is discovered in the mud by touch and by 
smell, of which those studied in captivity show a remarkably high develop- 
ment. The eyes are small and half hidden, but perfect and useful. The 
animal's voice resembles the growl of a young puppy, but its disposition 
is gentle. 

The duckbill lays eggs which are white, .75 x .50 inch in dimensions, 
and contain a large amount of food yolk. Only a few eggs are laid at a 
time, often only one ; and it is hatched in a short time. The young are 
blind and naked at birth, and suck their mother's milk from a little pit in 
her nippleless breast. 

The spiny ant-eaters form a distinct family (Echidnidae), with 

probably one highly variable species of the genus Echidna, 

found all over Australia, and a relative (Proechidna) 

Echidnas. v 

in New Guinea. In both the body is small, 15 to 
18 inches long, broad and carried by very short, strong 
legs terminating in big claws. The head is small, and the nose 
prolonged into a slender snout covered with a moist black mem- 
brane like a dog's nose. The mouth is without teeth, but the 
palate is studded with recurved spines, and the tongue is slender, 
extensile, and glutinous. The back is covered with stiff, hedge- 
hoglike spines, mixed with long, coarse hairs ; and when dan- 
ger threatens it outside its burrow, it curls up much like a hedge- 
hog, so as to protect the under parts, which have no spines but 

524 



ECHIDNA AND NODIAK 

are clothed in silky brown hair. The males have spurs on their 
heels, like the duckbill, but have never been seen to use them. 
It dwells in burrows of its own digging, and feeds upon ants 
caught precisely after the manner of other ant-eaters; and in 
captivity, where it makes a gentle and intelligent pet, is fond 
of scrambling about whatever it is allowed to climb. 265 

Its Papuan cousin, the nodiak, is larger, with a much 
more prolonged snout and tongue, and but three front toes. 




An Echidna, or Spiny Ant-eatlk. 



The aborigines hunt it for food in the mountain by the aid 
of dogs which know how to dislodge it from its burrow. 

The reproductive process in this family differs somewhat 
from that among the duckbills; for here, instead of the eggs 
being laid in a burrow nest, and covered by the mother, like a 
brooding hen, the echidna's egg is placed by the lips of the 
mother within two parallel folds of skin which at that season 
form a deep groove in the abdomen inclosing the nursing area, 
and is held there until it hatches, the young ant-eater breaking 
out at last by aid of an "egg tooth," or temporary hard tip on 
the end of the nose. When the young has attained a certain 

525 



THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 

size the mother removes it from the "pouch," but takes it in 
from time to time to suckle it. At night it is necessary for her 
to ramble in search of her own subsistence, and in order to leave 
her child safe during these absences she digs a small burrow 
wherever she happens to be and hides the little one within it. 




BRAIN OF Echidna aculeata, DORSAL View. (NATURAL SIZE.) 



526 



AUTHORITIES CITED 

The numbers preceding the titles are those by which the books are referred to in 
the raised figures in the lines of the text. 

Those works in the following list which are text-books are numbered i, 2, 16, 37, 
59, 60, 84, 95, 98, and 135. 

1. Huxley, T. H., Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals. (New York, 1878.) 

2. Parker, T. J., and Haswell, W. A., Text-book of Zoology. (New 

York, 1897.) 

3. Forbes, H. O. A Handbook to the Primates. (Allen's Naturalist's 

Library ; London, 1894.) 

4. Dubois, Eugene. Article in Anatomischer Anzeiger, Vol. XII, trans- 

lated into English and reprinted in the Smithsonian Report for 
1898. See also Marsh, Am. Journal of Science, Vol. I, 1896. 

5. Huxley, T. H. Man's Place in Nature. (Collected Essays, Lon- 

don, 1894.) 

6. Du Chaillu, Paul. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial 

Africa. (New York, 1861.) Gorilla Land. (New York, 1868.) 

7. Hartmann, Robert. Anthropoid Apes. {International Scientipc 

Series, New York, 1886.) 

8. Livingstone, David. Last Journals ; edited by H. Walter. (Lon- 

don, 1874.) See also Johnston's Livingstone and the Exploration 
of Central Africa. (London, 1897.) 

9. Schweixfurth, Georg. The Heart of Africa. (London, 1874.) 

10. Lydekker, Richard (editor). The Royal Natural History. (6 vols., 

London, 1895 +.) Reissued in New York as "The New Natural 
History." 

11. Kipling, J. S. Beast and Man in India. (London, 1891.) 

12. Wallace, Alfred Russel. The Geographical Distribution of 

Animals. (New York, 1875.) Other important authorities on this 
subject are Murray, Sclater, Newton, Gadow, Beddard, Lydekker, 
Heilprin, Merriam, and Allen. 

13. Romanes, J. G. Article in Proceedings Zoological Society oj London, 

1889. 

14. Martin, M. Natural History of Mammiferous Animals, with a 

Particular View of the . . . Monkeys. (London, 1841.) 

15. Broderip, W. J. Zoological Recreations. (Philadelphia, 1849.) 

527 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

16. Flower, W. H., and Lydekker, R. Mammals Living and Extinct. 

(London, 1891.) 0^" Recommended for use with this book. 

17. Tennent, Sir J. E. Ceylon, Physical, Historical, and Topographical. 

(London, 1859.) 

18. Johnston, Sir Harry H. Kilimanjaro. (London, 1885.) 

19. Blanford, Wo T. Fauna of British India: Mammals. (London, 

1888.) 

20. Ingersoll, Ernest. Articles in New International Encyclopaedia 

on subjects cited. (New York, 1903.) 

21. Desfontaines, Rene-Luiche. Fragmens d'un Voyage dans les 

Regences d'Alger. (Paris, 1838.) 

22. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man; and Selection in rela- 

tion to Sex. (London, 2d ed., 1874.) 

23. Blanford, W. T. Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia. (Lond., 1870.) 

24. Waterton, C. Wanderings in South America. (London, 1828.) 

25. Bates, H. W. The Naturalist on the River Amazon. (London, 

3d ed., 1873.) 

26. Belt, Thos. A Naturalist in Nicaragua. (London, 2d ed., 1888.) 

27. Wallace, A. R. Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. (London, 

1853.) Reprinted in Minerva Library. 

28. Haeckel, Ernest. The Evolution of Man. Translated by J. 

McCabe from 5th German edition. (London, 1905.) The Lost 
Link: our present Knowledge of the Descent of Man, with notes 
by Hans Gadow. (1898.) 

29. Brooke, Rajah James. Ten Years in Sarawak. (London, 1866.) 

30. Hornaday, Wm. T. Two Years in the Jungle. (New York, 1886.) 

31. Wallace, A. R. The Malay Archipelago. (New York, 1869.) 

32. Baird, S. F. Zoology of the United States and Mexican Boundary 

Survey. (Washington, 1859.) 
^. Im Thurn, E. F. Among the Indians of Guiana. (London, 1883.) 

34. Brown, C. B. Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana. (London, '99.) 

35. Hudson, W. H. The Naturalist in La Plata. (London, 1892.) 

36. Ingersoll, Ernest. Wild Neighbors: Outdoor Studies in the 

Natural History of the United States. (New York, 1897.) 

37. Beddard, F. E. Mammalia. (Cambridge, 1902.) 

Volume X of the Cambridge Natural History, a series of treatises covering 
the whole range of zoology. It admirably supplements the present work by 
giving extensive additional information as to structure and classification. 
7/^* Recommended for use with this book. 

38. Hose, Charles L. Mammals of Borneo. (London, 1893.) 

39. Cumming, Gordon. Wild Beasts and Wild Men. (N.Y., 1888.) 

528 . 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

40. Baron, L. Habits of the Aye-Aye. (Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 1882.) 

41. Bartlett, A. D. Wild Animals in Captivity. (New York, 1899.) 

42. Forsyth-Major, C. J. Articles in Novitates Zoologies. 

43. Grandidier, G., and Milne-Edwards, A. Histoire Naturelle de 

Madagascar: Mammiferes. (Paris, 1875.) 

44. Jerdon, T. C. Mammals of British India. (London, 1865.) 

45. Flower, Stanley. Articles in Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 1900. 

46. Dobson, George E. Catalogue of the Cheiroptera of the British 

Museum; Monograph of Asiatic Bats. (London, 1877.) Special 
papers, mostly in Proceedings Zoological Society of London. 

47. Spallanzani, L. Observations on the Organs of Vision in Bats. 

(Title of translation by Tilloch, published in the Philosophical 
Magazine, Vol. I, London, 1798.) 

48. Merriam, C. Hart. Natural History of the Adirondacks; in Trans- 

actions Linncean Society of New York, Vols. I and II. (1893-6.) 

49. Allen, H. A Monograph of the Bats of North America. {Bulletin 

U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 43; Washington, 1893.) 

50. Miller, G. S. A Revision of the North American Bats of the Family 

Vespertilionidse. (N. Am. Fauna, No. 13; Washington, 1897.) 

51. Fisher, A. K. The Mammals of Singsing, N.Y. (The Observer, 

Portland, Conn., 1896.) 

52. Stone, Witmer, and Cram, Wm. E. American Animals. (New 

York, 1902.) 

53. Gosse, P. A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica. (London, 185 1.) 

54. Burton, R. F. A Pilgrimage to El Medineh and Mecca. (New 

York, 1856.) 

55. Anderson, John. Zoology of Egypt. (London, 1898-1902.) 

56. Kennicott, Robert. Quadrupeds of Illinois. (Ann. Rept. U.S. 

Dept. Agriculture, Washington, 1851.) 

57. Horsfield, Thos. Zoological Researches in Java. (London, 1824.) 

58. Wilkinson, Sir John. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyp- 

tians. (London, 1878.) 

59. Zittel-Eastman. Text-book of Paleontology by Karl von Zittel, 

translated and edited by C. R. Eastman [and other specialists]. 
Part I, Invertebrates. (1900.) Part II, Fishes, Amphibians, and 
Reptiles. (New York, 1902.) Part III, Birds and Mammals. 
(Unpublished.) O^gr* Recommended for use with this book. 

60. Woodward, A. S. Outlines of Vertebrate Paleontology. (New 

York, 1898.) 

61. Dobson, G. E. A Monograph of the Insectivora. (London, 1886-90.) 

62. White, Gilbert. The Natural History of Selborne. (Harting's 

edition, London, 1888.) 

2 m 529 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

63. Wood, Rev. J. G. Homes without Hands. (New York, 1870.) 

64. Poey, Felipe. Memorias sobre la Historia National de la Isla de 

Cuba. (Havana, i860.) 

65. Lydekker, R. Mostly Mammals: Zoological Essays. (London, 

i9°3-) 

66. Humboldt, Baron Frederick. Narrative of Voyages. (Paris, 1804.) 

67. Maccurdy, G. C. The Eolithic Problem: Evidences of a Rude In- 

dustry antedating the Paleolithic. {American Anthropologist, 
n. s. Vol. VII; Washington, 1905.) 

68. Bailey, V. Biological Survey of Texas. {N. Am. Fauna, No. 25; 

Washington, 1905.) 

69. Darwin, Charles. Variation of Animals and Plants under Domes- 

tication. (New York, 1896.) 

70. Knight, K. W. The Book of the Rabbit. (London, 1889.) 

71. Morant, G. F. Rabbit Farming. (London, 1890.) 

72. Sharpe, D. L. Wild Life near Home. (New York, 1901.) 

73. Palmer, T. S. The Jack Rabbits of the United States. {Bulletin 

No. 8, U.S. Dept. Agriculture ; Washington, 1896.) 

74. True, F. W. A Revision of the American Moles. {Proc. U.S. Nat. 

Mus., Vol. XIX; Washington, 1896.) 

75. Standard, or Riverside, Natural History. Vol. V, Mammals. 

(Boston, 1884.) Has articles by Theo Gill, Elliott Coues, R. 
Ramsay Wright, W. B. Scott, W. N. Lockington, J. S. Kingsley. 

76. Hudson, W. H. Habits of the Vizcachas. {Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of Lon- 

don, 1872.) 

77. Darwin, Charles. Voyage of a Naturalist. (London, i860; 

New York, 1879.) 

78. Osgood, W. H. Revision of the Pocket Mice of the Genus Perogna- 

thus. {N. Am. Fauna, No. 18; Washington, 1900.) 

79. Seton, E. T. The Kangaroo Rat. {Scribner's Magazine, New 

York, April, 1900.) 

80. Coues, Elliott. A study of the Genera Geomys and Thomomys. 

(Powell's Exploration of the Colorado River; Washington, 

i875.) 

81. Merriam, C. H. Revision of the Pocket Gophers. {N. Am. Fauna, 

No. 8; Washington, 1895.) 

82. Bailey, V. The Pocket Gophers of the United States. {Bulletin 

5, U.S. Dept. Agriculture; Washington, 1895.) 

83. Dawkins, Wm. Boyd. Cave Hunting. (London, 1874.) British 

Pleistocene Mammalia. (London, 1866-7.) 

84. Baird, Spencer F. Zoology of Pacific Railroad Reports : Vol. VIII, 

Mammals. (Washington, 1857.) 

530 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

85. Miller, G. S. Voles and Lemmings. (N. Am. Fauna, No. 12; 

Washington, 1896.) 

86. Preble, E. A. A Biological Investigation of the Hudson Bay Region. 

(N. Am. Fauna, No. 22; Washington, 1902.) 

87. Ingersoll, Ernest. Country Cousins : Short Studies in the Natural 

History of the United States. (New York, 1884.) 

88. Rodway, J. In the Guiana Forest. (London, 1895.) 

89. Aplin, O. V. Mammals of Uruguay. (Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 

1894.) 

90. Audubon, J. J., and Bachman, J. The Quadrupeds of North 

America. (New York, 1846.) 

91. Godman, John D. American Natural History. (Philadelphia, 

3d ed., 1836.) 

92. Maunder, S. The Treasury of Natural History. (London, 1862.) 

93. Bell, Thos. History of British Quadrupeds. (London, 2d ed., 1874.) 

94. Ingersoll, Ernest. Wild Life of Orchard and Field. (New York, 

1902.) 

95. Hornaday, W. T. The American Natural History: a Foundation 

of Useful Knowledge of the Higher Animals of North America. 
(New York, 1904.) 

96. Waterton, C. Essays on Natural History. (New York, undated.) 

97. Cope, E. D. Intelligence in Monkeys. {Am. Naturalist, Vol. XI, 

1872.) 

98. Elliot, D. G. Synopsis of the Mammals of North America. (Chi- 

cago, 1 90 1.) The Land and Sea Mammals of Middle America and 
the W T est Indies. (Chicago, 1904.) Both are technical publica- 
tions of the Field Columbian Museum. 

99. Abbott, C. C. Upland and Meadow. (New York, 1886.) 

100. Cram, W. E. Little Beasts of Field and Wood. (Boston, 1899.) 

101. Atlalo, B. F. Sport in Europe. (London, 1901.) 

102. Perkins, G. H. Articles on Flying Squirrels, in Am. Naturalist, 

Vol. VII, 1873, pp. 132-138; Vol. XVII, 1883, pp. 36-42. See 
also Nos. 48, 52, 56, 90, 99, and 100. 

103. Ground -Squirrels. For these (Chipmunks and Spermophiles) 

consult: Allen, J. A., Review of the genus Tamias, Bulletin Am. 
Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. Ill (New York, 1890); Bailey, V., The 
Prairie Ground-Squirrels or Spermophiles of the Mississippi 
Valley (U.S. Dept. Agriculture, Washington, 1893); and articles 
in Am. Naturalist, Vol. IV, p. 249; Vol. VII, p. 695. See also 
Nos. 48, 52, 56, 90, 91, and 105. 

104. Ingram, J. N. The Australian Rabbit Plague. {LippincotVs 

Magazine, Philadelphia, 1893, p. 751.) 
53i 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

105. Abbott, C. C. Wasteland Wanderings. (New York, 1887.) 

106. Coues, E. The Prairie Gopher, in Am. Naturalist, Vol. IX, 1875. 

107. Semper, Carl. Animal Life as affected by the Natural Conditions 

of Existence. (New York, 1881.) 

108. Mills, Wesley. The Nature and Development of Animal Intelli- 

gence. (New York, 1898.) 

109. Harting, J. E. British Animals extinct within Historic Times. 

(London, 1880.) 

no. Beavers. Consult: Morgan, Lewis H., The American Beaver and 
his Works (Philadelphia, 1868); Martin, H. T., Castorologia 
(Montreal, 1892); Hulbert, W. D., Story of the Beaver (McClure's 
Magazine, April, 1901); Dugmore, A. R., Haunts of the Beaver 
(Nipissing District, Ontario) (Everybody's Magazine, December, 
1901). 

in. Allen, J. A. Seasonal Variations in the Red Squirrel. (Bulletin 
Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. Ill, 1890.) 

112. Merriam, C. Hart. The San Francisco Mountain Region. (N. 

Am. Fauna, No. 3; Washington, 1890.) 

113. Merriam, C. Hart. Mammals of Idaho. (N. Am. Fauna, No. 

5 ; Washington, 1891.) 

114. Alston, E. Biologia Centrali-Americana : Mammals. (London, 

1879-82.) 

115. Cumberland, C. The Guinea Pig: for Food, Fur and Fancy. 

(London, 1886.) 

116. Cope, E. D. Extinct Rodentia of North America (Am. Naturalist, 

Vol. XVII, 1883, pp. 43, 165, 370); Cope, Tertiary Vertebrata 
(U.S. Geol. Survey Territories, Vol. Ill, p. 202); Marsh, O. C, 
(Am. Jour. Science, Vol. XI, 1876, p. 249). See Nos. 60, 98. 

117. Hudson, W. H. Articles in Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 1875. 

118. Cope, E. D. The Creodonta. (Am. Naturalist, Vol. XVIII, 1884, 

PP- 255, 344, 478.) 

119. Scott, W. B. The Evolution of the Mammalia. (International 

Monthly, June and July, 1901.) 

120. Oswald, Felix. Zoological Sketches. (Philadelphia, 1883.) 

121. Johanna. For a scientific history, see Proc. Zobl. Soc. of London, 

1899. See also Hartmann, Anthropoid Apes (N.Y. 1886). 

122. Cope, E. D. The Extinct Dogs of North America. (Am. Natural- 

ist, Vol. XVII, 1883, p. 248; also Proc. Acad. Sciences of Phila- 
delphia, 1875, p. 447.) 

123. Cope, E. D. Origin of the Specialized Teeth of Carnivora. (Am. 

Naturalist, Vol. XIII, 1879, p. 171.) 

124. Cornish, C. J. Animals at Work and Play. (London, 2d ed., 1897.) 

532 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

125. Johnson, Lindsay. Observations on the Eyes of Seals and of the 

Felidae. {Proc. Zo'ol. Soc. of London, 1893, p. 719; 1894.) 

126. Porter, J. Hampden. Wild Beasts. (New York, 1874.) 

127. Spears, J. R. Gold-diggings of Cape Horn. (New York, 1895). 

128. Roosevelt, Theodore. Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter. 

(New York, 1905.) 

129. Perry, W. A. Contribution to Shield's Big Game of North 

America. (Chicago, 1890.) 

130. Eastman, C. A. The Red Hunters and the Animal People. (New 

York, 1905.) 

131. Azara, Felix de. Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay 

and the River La Plata. Translated from the Spanish by Hunter. 
(London, 1838.) 

132. Hamilton, Sir E. The Wildcat of Europe. (London, 1896.) 

133. Watkins, M. G. The Natural History of the Ancients. (London, 

1896.) 

134. Elliot, D. G. A Monograph of the Felidae. (Folio, colored plates; 

London, 1878.) 

135. Mivart, St. George. The Cat. (New York, 1892.) 

136. Neuman, A. H. Elephant Hunting in East Equatorial Africa, etc. 

(London, 1898.) 

137. Lankester, E. Ray. Extinct Animals. (London, 1905.) 

138. Repplier, Agnes. The Fireside Sphinx. (New York, 1901.) 

139. Blyth, E. A Monograph of the Species of Lynx. Journal Asiatic 

Society of Bengal. (Calcutta, 1842.) 

140. Baldwin, J. H. The Large and Small Game of Bengal. (London, 

1877.) 

141. La Croix, Paul. Mceurs, Usages, et Costumes au Moyen Age. 

(Paris, 1871.) 

142. Cumming, R. Gordon. Five Years of a Hunter's Life in South 

Africa. (New York, 1850.) 

143. Baker, Sir Samuel. In the Heart of Africa. (New York, 1884.) 

144. Drummond, W. H. The Large Game and Natural History of 

South Africa. (Edinburgh, 1875.) 

145. Cameron, Lieut. V. L. Across Africa. (London, 1876.) 

146. Gibbons, A. St. H. Exploration and Hunting in South Africa. 

(London, 1898.) 

147. Baker, Sir S. Wild Beasts and their Ways. (New York, 1898.) 

148. El Mangali, Sidi Mohammed. Traitd de Venerie. Traduit de 

l'Arabe par Florian Pharaon. (Paris, 1880.) 
149- Andersson, C. J. Lake Ngami. (New York, 1857.) 
150. Selous, F. C. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa. (London, 1895.) 

533 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

151. Delamere, Lord. Lion Hunting. {Badminton Mag., May, 1896.) 

152. Schulz (and Hammar). New Africa. (London, 1897.) 

153. Sterndale, R. A. Mammalia of India. (Calcutta, 1884.) 

154. Fayrer, Sir Joseph. Royal Tiger of Bengal. (London, 1875.) 

155. Campbell, W. My Indian Journal. (London, 1864.) 

156. Pollok, Col. F. T. Incidents of Sport and Travel. (London, 

1894.) Wild Sports of Burma and Assam. (London, 1900.) 

157. Rice, W. Indian Game: from Quail to Tiger. (London, 1884.) 

158. Shakespear, Lt. Col. H. Wild Sports of India. (London, 1865.) 

159. Macintyre, Maj. Gen. D. Hindu-Koh; Wanderings and Wild 

Sports on and beyond the Himalayas. (London, 1892.) 

160. Kinloch, Capt. A. A. A. Large Game Shooting in Thibet. (Cal- 

cutta, 3d ed. 1892.) 

161. Leveson, H. A. Sport in Many Lands. (London, 1880.) 

162. Sanderson, G. P. Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of 

India. (London, 1893.) 

163. Bevan, Major H. Thirty Years in India. (London, 1839.) 

164. Brown, J. Moray. Shikar Sketches. (London, 1887.) Stray 

Sport. (1893.) 

165. Holub, Emil. Seven Years in South Africa. (London, 1881.) 

166. Inglis, James. Tent Life in Tiger Land, with which is incorporated 

Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier. (London, 1892.) 

167. Barras, Julius. India and Tiger Hunting. (London, 1885.) 

168. 'Hall, Basil. Voyages and Travels. (London, 183 1-3.) 

169. Forsyth, James. Highlands of Central India. (London, 1889.) 

170. Morris, D. The Mungoose on Sugar Estates in the West Indies. 

Reviewed with extensive comments in Am. Naturalist, Vol. XVII, 1883, 
p. 299. See also The Field, London, May 6, 1882, and July 13, 1895. 

171. Topsell, Rev. Edward. Historie of Four-footed Beastes. (Lon- 

don, 1607.) 

172. Martin, Mrs. A. Home Life on an Ostrich Farm. (London, 

1891.) 

173. Dallas, W. S. Article "Rodentia" in CasselVs Natural History. 

174. Pennant, Thos. Arctic Zoology. (London, 1787.) 

175. Coues, E. Fur-bearing Animals: a Monograph of North American 

Mustelidae. (Washington, 1877.) 

176. Merriam, C. H. Synopsis of the Weasels of North America. (N. 

Am. Fauna, No. 11; Washington, 1896.) 

177. Everitt. Ferrets: their Management. (London, 1897.) 

178. Poulton, E. B. The Colors of Animals. (London, 1890.) 

179. Beddard, Frank. Animal Coloration. (New York, 1892.) 

180. Allen, J. A. Change of Color in the Northern Hare. (Bulletin 

534 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Am. Mus. Nat. His., Vol. VIII, New York, 1894.) Summarized 
in Am. Naturalist, Vol. XVIII, 1894, p. 890. 

181. Hearxe, S. A Journey ... to the Northern Ocean. (Lond., 1875.) 

182. De Kay, James E. Natural History of the State of New York; 

Part I, Zoology. (Albany, 1842.) 

183. Richardsox, Sir John. Fauna Boreali-Americana. (Lond., 1829.) 

184. Rollestox, G. Domestic Cats of ancient and modern times. 

(Journal Anat. and Phys., Vol. II; London, 1868.) 

185. Wallace, A. R. Darwinism. (London, 1889.) Reprinted in the 

Humboldt Library. 

186. Howell, A. H. Revision of the Skunks of the Genus Chincha. (N. 

Am. Fauna, No. 20; Washington, 1901.) 

187. Robixsox, R. In New England Fields and Woods. (Boston, 1896.) 

188. Elliott, H. W. Report on the Condition of Affairs in Alaska. 

(Washington, 1875.) 

189. Scammox, C. M. The Marine Mammals of the Northwest Coast 

of North America. (San Francisco, 1874.) 

190. Cope, E. D. The Japanese Lapdog. {Am. Naturalist, 1879.) 

191. Huxley, T. H. The Cranial and Dental Characters of the Canidae. 

(Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 1880.) 

192. Miyart, St. George. Fox-dogs. {Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London. 1890.) 

193. Laxtz, D. E. Coyotes in their economic Relations. {Bulletin No. 

20, Biological Survey; Washington, 1905.) 

194. Selous, Edmuxd. Romance of the Animal World. (Phila., 1905.) 

195. Wixdle and Humphreys. Cranial and Dental Characteristics of 

the Domestic Dog. Proc. Zo'dl. Soc. of London, 1890. (Summa- 
rized in article "Dog," in New International Encyclopaedia.) 

196. Strutt, J. Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. (Lon- 

don, 1801.) 

197. Miyart, St. George. Monograph of the Canidae. (Lond., 1870.) 

198. Setox, E. T. Wild Animals I have known. (New York, 1898.) 

199. Adams, A. Leith. Field and Forest Rambles. (London, 1873.) 

200. Burroughs, John. Winter Sunshine. (Boston, 1876.) 

201. Nelsox, E. W. Report upon Natural History Collections in Alaska. 

(Washington, 1887.) 

202. Feildex, H. W. Articles in The Zoologist, 1877. 

203. Steller, G. W. Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka. (St. 

Petersburg, 1774.) 

204. Cope, E. D. The Californian Cave Bear. (Am. Naturalist, Vol. 

XXV, 1891.) 

205. Gutllemard, F. H. H. Cruise of the Marchesa to Kamschatka 

and New Guinea. (London, 1886.) 
535 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

206. Osgood, W. H. Natural History of the Cook Inlet Region. (Bul- 

letin No. 21, Biological Survey; Washington, 1901.) 

207. Hitchcock, Rohyn. The ancient Pit-dwellers of Yezo. (With a 

bibliography. Smithsonian Report for 1890; Washington, 1891.) 
See also Ed. Greey's Bear Worshippers of Yezo. (Boston, 1884.) 

208. Gubernatis, Angelo de. Zoological Mythology, or the Legends 

of Animals. (New York, 1872.) 

209. Beccari. Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo. (London, 

1901.) 

210. Cope,E. D. The Condylarthra. (Am. Naturalist, Vol. XVIII, 1884.) 

211. Cope, E. D. The Amblypoda. (Am. Naturalist, Vol. XVIII, 

1884; Vol. XIX, 1885.) 

212. Marsh, O. C. The Dinocerata. (Washington, 1884.) 

213. Osborn, H. F. The Ancylopoda. (Am. Naturalist, Vol. XXVII, 

I893-) 

214. Gerard, Sir Montague. Leaves from the Diary of a Soldier and 

Sportsman. (London, 1903.) 

215. Storer, J. Wild White Cattle of Great Britain. (London, 1897.) 

See also illustrated articles in The Field (London) for August 16 
and 23, and December 13, 1890; and for November 5, 1904. 

216. Caton, J. D. The Antelope and Deer of America. (New York, 

1897.) 

217. Allen, J. A. The American Bisons. (Cambridge, 1876.) 

218. Hornaday, W. T. Extermination of the American Bison. (Annual 

Report Smithsonian Institution for 1887; Washington, 1889.) 

219. Whitney, Wister, and others. Musk-ox, Bison, Sheep, and 

Goat. (Sportsman's Library; New York, 1904.) 

220. Lydekker, R. Wild Oxen, Sheep and Goats of all kinds, Living 

and Extinct. (London, 1898.) 

221. Whitney, Caspar. Jungle Trails and Jungle People. (N. Y. t 

1905-) 

222. Hornaday, W. T. Mountain Sheep of North America. (Fifth 

Ann. Rept., N. Y. Zo'dl. Soc.; New York, 1901.) 

223. Buxton, E. N. Short Stalks. (London, 1898.) See also Proc. Zo'dl. 

Society London, 1896. 

224. Blanford, W. T. Eastern Persia: Zoology. (London, 1876.) 

225. Shaler, N. Domesticated Animals. (New York, 1895.) 

226. Brehm, A. E. Illustrates Thierleben. (1st ed., Leipzig, 1863.) 

It has had several later editions and English translations ; and its illustra- 
tions, by Vogt, Specht, and other artists, have been repeatedly copied. 

227. Baillie-Grohman, W. A. Sport in the Alps, Past and Present. 

(London, 1896.) 

536 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

228. Sclater, P. L., and Thomas, O. The Book of Antelopes. (4 vols., 

quarto, colored plate of each species; London, 1894-1900.) 

229. Baker, Sir S. Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia. (London, 1867.) 

230. Harris, Capt. W. Portraits of Game and Wild Animals in South- 

ern Africa. (Folio, colored plates; London, 1846.) 

231. Bryden, H. A. Nature and Sport in South Africa. (London, 

1879.) Kloof and Karoo. (1886.) 

232. Millais, J. G. A Breath from the Veldt. (London, 1895.) 

233. Roosevelt, Theo., and others. The Deer Family. {Sportsman's 

Library; New York, 1902.) 

234. Allen, J. A. History of North American Pinnipeds. (Wash., 1880.) 

235. Morgan, Lloyd. Animal Sketches. (London, 1891.) 

236. Lydekker, R. Deer of all Lands. (Four vols., quarto, colored 

plates of all species; London, 1898.) 

237. Deer Stalking. Scrope, Days of Deer Stalking in the Scottish 

Highlands (London, Hamilton's ed., 1883) ; St. John, Sportsman 
and Naturalist in Sutherlandshire (London, 1891); Jeffries, 
Red Deer (London, 2d ed., 1892); Grimble, Highland Sport 
(London, 1896); and volumes in the Badminton and similar 
libraries of books for sportsmen. 

238. Mayer, A. M. Sport with Gun and Rod in American Woods and 

Waters. (New York, 1883.) 

239. Wortman, J. L. Extinct Camelidae of North America. {Bulletin 

Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. X, 1898.) 

240. Cunningham, R. O. Natural History of the Straits of Magellan. 

(London, 1871.) 

241. Tschudi, J. J. von. Travels in Peru. (New York, 1854.) 

242. Beebe, C. Wm. Two Bird Lovers in Mexico. (Boston, 1905.) 

243. Huxley, T. H. American Addresses. (London, 1877.) 

244. Schmidt, Oscar. Mammalia. (New York, 1886.) 

245. Tegetmeier, W. B. Horses, Asses, and Mules. (London, 1895.) 

246. Ewart, Cossar. The Penecuik Experiments. (London, 1899.) 

247. Osborn, Henry F. Evolution of the Horse. (New York, 1906.) 

With this may well be read Professor Ridgway's Origin and Influence of 
the Thoroughbred Horse. (London, 1905.) 

248. Living Animals of the World. (London and New York, 1902.) 

249. Lucas, F. A. Animals of the Past. (New York, 1901.) 

250. Nordenskjold, Baron N. A. Voyage of the Vega. (Lond., 1881.) 

251. Stejneger, L. Articles in Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., Vol. VI (Wash- 

ington, 1884) ; and in Am. Naturalist, Vol. XXI, 1887. 

252. Bigg-Wither, T. P. Pioneering in South Brazil. (London, 1878.) 

253. Dampier, William. Voyages to Campeachy. (London, 1729.) 

537 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

-254. Wilson, Thos. The Swastika, the earliest known Symbol, etc. 
{Ann. Rept. U.S. Nat. Mus.; Washington, 1894.) 

255. Beddard, F. The Book of Whales. (London, 1900.) 

256. Bullen, F. T. Denizens of the Deep. (New York, 1904.) 

257. Sack, A. von. Narrative of a Voyage to Surinam. (London, 1810.) 

258. Lydekker, R. A Handbook to the Marsupialia and Monotremata. 

{Allen's Naturalist's Library ; London, 1894.) 

259. Wallace, A. R. Island Life. (New York, 1880.) 

260. Morgan, T. H. Evolution and Adaptation. (New York, 1903.) 

261. Wheelwright, H. Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist; or Notes 

on the Field Sports and Fauna of Australia Felix. By an old 
Bushman. (London, 2d ed., 1865.) 

262. Gould, John. The Mammals of Australia. (London, 1863.) 

This is a magnificent work in three folio volumes with colored plates. 
Other notable illustrated works on Marsupials are Waterhouse's Mammalia 
(Vol. I, London, 1848), and Krefft's Mammals of Australia (Sydney, 1871). 
Both have excellent drawings, in some editions colored. See also No. 258. 

263. Bennett, G. F. Gatherings of a Naturalist. (London, 1866.) 

264. Krefft, G. Mammals of Australia. (Sydney, 1871.) 

265. Saville-Kent, W. The Naturalist in Australia. (London, 1897.) 

266. Bensley, B. A. A Theory of the Origin and Evolution of, the 

Australian Marsupials. {Am. Naturalist, Vol. XXXV, 1901 ; 
see also in this connection Ibid., pp. 117 and 139.) 

267. Cotjes, E., and Allen, J. A. Monographs of North American 

Rodentia; with Bibliography of N. Am. Mammals to 1877. (U.S. 
Geological Survey; Washington, 1877.) 

268. Lord, J. K. The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Co- 

lumbia. (London, 1866.) 

269. Schillings, C. G. Flashlights in the Jungle. (New York, 1906.) 

This is the authorized rendering into English of Schilling's German work, 
and is the most instructive book on the zoology of East Africa published 
within recent years. It appeared too late to enable the author of the present 
book to take advantage of its store of information, and its numerous and 
remarkable photographic illustrations ; but it does not compel any changes of 
statement or view, except, perhaps, that it shows that certain of the large game 
animals are still more numerous than had been supposed. 

270. Matschie, Paul. Saugethiere Deutsch Ost-Afrika. (Berlin, 1895.) 



538 



Index of Authorities Cited 



References are to numbers preceding the various entries, pp. 527-538. 



Abbott, 99, 105. 

Adams, 199. 

Atlalo, 101. 

Allen, H., 49. 

Allen, J. A., in, 180, 217, 

Alston, 114. 

Anderson, 55. 

Andersson, 149. 

Aplin, 89. 

Audubon, 90. 

Azara, 131. 

Bailey, 68, 82. 
Baillie-Grohman, 227. 
Baird, $2, 84. 
Baker, 143, 147, 229. 
Baldwin, 140. 
Baron, 40. 
Barras, 167. 
Bartlett, 41. 
Bates, 25. 

Beaver, Literature, no. 
Beccari, 209. 
Beddard, 37, 179, 255. 
Beebe, 242. 
Bell, 93. 
Belt, 26. 
Bennett, 263. 
Bensley, 266. 
Bevan, 163. 
Bigcr-Wither, 252. 
Blanford, 19, 23, 224. 
Blyth, 139. 
Brehm. 226. 
Broderip, W. J., 15. 
Brooke, 29. 
Brown, C. B., 34. 
Brown, J. M., 164. 



Bryden, 231. 
Bullen, 256. 
Burroughs, 200. 
Burton, 54. 
234. Buxton, 223. 

Cameron, 145. 

Campbell, 155. 

Caton, 216. 

Cope, 97, 116, 118, 122, 123, 190, 

204, 210, 211. 
Cornish, 124. 
Coues, 80, 106, 175. 
Cram, 52, 100. 
Cumberland, 115. 
Cumming, G., 39. 
Cumming, R. G., 142. 
Cunningham, 240. 

Dallas, 173. 
Dampier, 253. 
Darwin, 22, 69, 77. 
Dawkins, 8t,. 
Deer Stalking, 237. 
De Kay, 182. 
Delamere, 151. 
Desfontaines, 21. 
Distribution of Animals, no. 
Dobson, 46, 61. 
Drummond, 144. 
Dubois, 4. 
Du Chaillu, 6. 

Eastman, 59, 130. 
Elliot, D. G., 98, 134. 
Elliott, H. W., 188. 
El Mangali, 148. 
Everitt, 177. 
Ewart, 246. 

539 



INDEX OF AUTHORITIES CITED 



Fayrer, 154. 
Feilden, 202. 
Fisher, 5.1. 
Flower, S., 45. 
Flower, W. H., 16. 
Flying Squirrels, 102. 
Forbes, 3. 
Forsyth, 169. 
Forsyth -Major, 42. 

Gerard, 214. 
Godraan, 91. 
Gosse, 53. 
Gould, 262. 
Grandidier, 43. 
Ground Squirrels, 103. 
Gubernatis, 208. 
Guillemard, 205. 

Haeckel, 28. 

Hall, 168. 

Hamilton, 132. 

Harris, 230. 

Harting, 109. 

Hartmann, 7. 

Hearne, 181. 

Hitchcock, 207. 

Holub, 165. 

Hornaday, 30, 95, 218, 222. 

Horsfield, 57. 

Hose, 38. 

Howell, 186. 

Hudson, 35, 76, 117. 

Humboldt, 66. 

Huxley, 1, 5, 191, 243. 

Im Thurn, ^. 
Ingersoll, 20, 36, 87, 94. 
Inglis, 166. 
Ingram, 104. 

Jerdon, 44.. 
Johanna, 121. 
Johnson, 125. 
Johnston, 18. 



Kennicott, 56. 
Kinloch, 160. 
Kipling, 11. 
Knight, 70. 
Krefft, 264. 

La Croix, 141. 

Lantz, 193. 

Leveson, 161. 

Living Animals of the World, 248. 

Livingstone, 8. 

Lucas, 249. 

Lydekker, 10, 16, 65, 220, 236, 258. 

Macintyre, 159. 

Marsh, 212. 

Martin, H. T., no. 

Martin, M., 14, 172. 

Maunder, 92. 

Mayer, 238. 

Merriam, 48, 81, 103, 112, 113, 

176. 
Millais, 232. 
Miller, 50, 85. 
Mills, 108. 

Mivart, 135, 192, 197. 
Morant, 71. 
Morgan, C. L., 235. 
Morgan, L. H., no. 
Morgan, T. H., 260. 
Morris, 170. 

Nelson, 201. 
Nordenskjold, 250. 

Osborn, 213, 247. 
Osgood, 78, 206. 
Oswald, 120. 

Palmer, 73. 

Parker and Haswell, 2. 

Pennant, 174. 

Perkins, 102. 

Perry, 129. 

540 



IXDEX OF AUTHORITIES CITED 



Poey, 64. 
Pollok, 156. 
Porter, 126. 
Poulton, 178. 
Preble, 86. 

Repplier, 138. 

Rice, 157. 

Richardson, 183. 

Riverside Natural History, 75. 

Robinson, 187. 

Rodway, 88. 

Rolleston, 184. 

Romanes, 13. 

Roosevelt, 123, 238. 

Royal Natural History, 10. 

Sack, 257. 
Sanderson, 162. 
Scammon, 189. 
Schmidt, 244. 
Schulz, 152. 
Schweinfurth, G., 9. 
Sclater, 228. 
Scott, 119. 
Selous, E., 194. 
Selous, F. C, 150. 
Semper, 107. 
Seton, 79, 198. 
Shakespear, 158. 
Shaler, 225. 



Sharp, 72. 

Spallanzani, 47. 

Spears, 127. 

Standard Natural History, 75. 

Stejneger, 251. 

Steller, 203. 

Sterndale, 153. 

Stone and Cram, 52. 

Storer, 215. 

Strutt, 196. 

Tegetmeier, 245. 
Tennent, 17. 
Topsell, 171. 
True, 74. 
Tschudi, 241. 

Wallace, 12, 27, 31, 185, 259. 
Waterton, 24, 96. 
Watkins, 133. 
Wheelwright, 261. 
White, 62. 
Whitney, 219, 221. 
Wilkinson, 58. 
Wilson, 254. 
Windle, 195. 
Wood, 63. 
Woodward, 60. 
Wortman, 239. 

Zittel-Eastman, 59. 



54i 



INDEX 



Aard vark {Oryderopus capensis), 

485. 

Aard wolf (Proteles cristata), 158. 

/Elurodon, 188. 

^Eluropus {M. melanoleucus), 210. 

Agouti {Dasyprocta agouti), 418. 

Ai, or two-toed sloth, 473. 

Alacdaga (Aladaga jaculus), 424. 

Alluates or arguatoes, 43. 

Alpaca, domesticated, 338, 340. 

Amblypoda, 2^2. 

Amnion or argali, 255. 

Amphicyon, primitive carnivore, 85, 
86, 188, 210. 

Ancylopoda, 234. 

Animals alike in northern hemi- 
sphere, 461. 

Animals, domesticated by prehis- 
toric man, 195, 200, 340, 359, 

483- 
Animals, sacred. — See Superstitions. 
Anoa (Anoa, depressicornis), 243. 
Anomalurus, or scaletail, 446. 
Ant-eater, banded (Myrmecobius 

fasciatus), 510. 
Ant-eater, great (Myrmecophaga 

jubata), 469. 
Ant-eater, lesser (Tamandua tetra- 

dadyla), 472, 473. 
Ant-eater, little two-toed (Cydo- 

turus didadylus), 473. 
Ant-eaters, Old World, 485-487. 
Ant-eaters, scaly, or pangolins, 486. 
Ant-eaters, spiny, 524. 
Antelope, addax (Addax nasomacu- 

latus), 272. 
Antelope, American, or pronghom, 

286 



Antelope, Angas's (Tragelaphus 

angasi), 271. 
Antelope, beatrix {Oryx beatrix), 

272. 
Antelope, beisa (Oryx beisa), 272. 
Antelope, harnessed (Tragelaphus 

scripta), 276. 
Antelope, Indian, or blackbuck, 277. 
Antelope, nilgai (Boselaphus trago- 

camelus), 272. 
Antelope, roan (Hippotragus equi- 

nus), 273. 
Antelope, sable (Hippotragus niger), 

273- 
Antelope, Speke's or sitatunga, 272. 
Antelope, zebra (Cephalophus 

dories), 282. 
Antelopes, ancestry of, 268. 
Anthropoid apes, characterized, 10. 
Aoudad (Ovis tragelaphus), 257. 
Apar, or three-banded armadillo, 478. 
Ape of Gibraltar (Macacus inuus), 

3 1 - 

Apes, anthropoid, 7-23. 

Apes and monkeys, intelligence of, 

13, 19, 20, 22, 30, S3, 34, 40, 46. 
Apes and monkeys using missiles, 

19, 2 9, 35, 43- 
Arctotherium, 210, 211. 
Argali, true (Ovis ammon), 255. 
Armadillo, Brazilian (Sderopeura 

bruneti), 476. 
Armadillo, giant (Priodon giganteus), 

476. 
Armadillo, peludo (Dasypus sex- 

cindus), 476. 
Armadillo, three-banded (Tolypeutes 

tricindus), 478. 



543 



INDEX 



Armadillos, mail of, 476. 
Arsinoetherium, 375. 
Artiodactyla, 234, 235. 
Ass, African (Equus [Asinus] 

ajricanus), 366, 369. 
Ass, Asiatic (Equus [Asinus] onager), 

367. 
Aurochs (Bos taurus), 238. 
Axis, or spotted Indian deer, 303, 

308. 

Babakoto, or indris, a lemur, 51. 
Babirussa (Babirusa alfurus), 350. 
Baboon, characteristics of, 32. 
Baboon, Arabian or sacred (Papio 

hamadryas), 33, 36. 
Baboon, Celebean black (Cynopi- 

thecus niger), 32. 
Baboon, chacma (Papio porcarius), 

33- 
Baboon, gelada (Theropithecus 

gelada), 35. 
Baboon, hamadryad, sacred in 

Egypt, 36. 
Baboon, mandrill (Papio maimon), 

3 2 , 34- 
Baboon, yellow (Papio babuin), 35. 
Badger, American (Taxidea ameri- 

cana), 177. 
Badger, European (Meles taxus), 176. 
Badger, ferret (genus Helictis), 175. 
Badger, sand, 176. 
Badger, stinking, 176. 
Balisaur (Arctonyx collaris), 176. 
Bandicoots (family Peramelidae), 506. 
Banteng ortsine (Bos sondaicus), 241. 
Barbary or Gibraltar ape, 31. 
Barrigudo or caparro monkeys, 41. 
Bat, brush-tongued, 63. 
Bat, little (Myotis lucifugus), 59. 
Bat, lyre (Megaderma lyra), 67. 
Bats (order Chiroptera), 58. 
Bats, color protection for, 63. 
Bats, fruit-eating, 64. 



Bats, superstitions as to, 62, 67. 
Bats, vampire (genus Desmodus),6i. 
Bats, wing and membranes, 59. 
Bear, American black (Ursus 

americanus) , 212, 215. 
Bear, Glacier (Ursus emmonsi), 220. 
Bear, grizzly (Ursus horribilis), 212, 

218. 
Bear, Malayan sun (Ursus malaya- 

nus), 220. 
Bear, party-colored (Mluropus me- 

lanoleucus), 210, 212. 
Bear, polar (Ursus [Thalassarctos] 

maritimus), 212, 218. 
Bear, sloth (Ursus [Melursus] la- 

biatus), 212, 216. 
Bear, spectacled (Ursus [Tremarctus] 

ornatus), 211. 
Bears, ancestry of, 210, 211. 
Bears, characteristics of, 211-220. 
Bears, classification of, 212. 
Bears, methods of fishing, 214. 
Bears, prehistoric cave, 211. 
Beaver, American (Castor cana- 
densis), 460-468. 
Beaver, European (Castor fiber), 460. 
Beaver fat (Hydromys chrysogaster), 

43 T > 494- 
Bengal or Rhesus monkey, 30. 
Bezoar goat or pasan, 259. 
Bharal or nahura (Ovis nahura), 257. 
Bighorn, American (Ovis cervina), 

255, 256. 
Binturong (Arctitis binturong), 154. 
Bison, American (Bos americanus) 

250. 
Bison, European (Bos bonasus), 249. 
Bison, fossil, 248. 
Bison, Indian, or gaur, 240. 
Blackbuck, Indian (Antilope cervi- 

capra), 277. 
Blacktail, or mule deer, .330. 
Blacktail, Columbian (Odocoileus 

columbianus), 332. 



544 



INDEX 



Blessbok (Bubalis [Damaliscus] albi- 

frons), 284. 
Boar, wild (Sus scroja), 345, 347. 
Bobac (Arctomys bobac), 457. 
Bobcat (Felts ruja), 143, 144. 
Bouquetin or ibex (Capra ibex), 260. 
Bovidae, family of, 238. 
Brain, of man compared with that 

of apes, 9, 11, 19. 
Buansuah or dhole, 197. 
Buffalo, American, 257. 
Buffalo, Indian (Bos bubalus), 244. 
Buffalo, S. African (Bos cafjre), 246. 
Buffalo, W. African (Bos pumilus), 

246. 
Buffalo-runner, 191. 
Bushbucks (genus Tragelaphus), 

269. 

Cacomistle (Bassariscus astutus), 225. 

Camel, Arabian (Camelns drome- 
darius), 336. 

Camel, Bactrian (Camelus bactri- 
anusX 337. 

Camel tribe (Tylopoda), 334. 

Camels, ancestry of, 334. 

Capybara (Hydrochcerus capybara), 
420. 

Caracal (Felis caracal), 146, 148. 

Carcajou, or wolverine, 166. 

Caribou, Barren Grounds (Rangijer 
arcticus), 321. 

Caribou, woodland (Rangijer cari- 
bou), 324. 

Carnivora, place in nature, 82. 

Carnivora, primitive, 80, 85. 

Cat, Angora or Persian, 137, 139. 

Cat, Bengal (Felis bengalensis), 132. 

Cat, Caffre, Libyan or gloved, 135, 

J 39- 
Cat, desert (Felis ornata), 137, 139. 
Cat, Egyptian (Felis libyca), poem 

upon, 134, 139. 
Cat, fishing (Felis viverrina), 132 



Cat, flat-headed (Felis planiceps), 

Cat, golden-haired (Felis rutila), 

I3 1 - 
Cat, grass or Pampas (Felis pa- 

jeros), 103. 
Cat, Indian jungle (Felischaus), 138. 
Cat, leopard, 10 1, 132. 
Cat, mechanism of sheathed claws, 

107. 
Cat, Mediterranean, 138. 
Cat, mummies of, 134. 
Cat, Pampas or grass, 103. 
Cat, ring-tailed or cacomistle, 221. 
Cat, rusty (Felis rubiginosa), 132. 
Cat, serval (Felis serual), 133. 
Cat, Siamese, 131. 
Cat, steppe (Felis caudata), 137, 139. 
Cat, wild, of Europe (Felis catus), 

i37- 
Cats (family Felidae), 90. 
Cats, origin of group, 90. 
Cats, origin of domestic, 138. 
Cats trained for sport, 146, 148. 
Cattle (family Bovidae), 238. 
Cattle, British white, 239. 
Cattle, Galla or sunga, 243. 
Cattle, humped (Bos indicus), 241. 
Cattle, Pembroke, 240. 
Cattle, sacred, of India, 242. 
Cave bears, 211. 
Cave lion (Felis spelaus), 121. 
Cavy family (Caviidae), 421. 
Cavy, Patagonian (Dolichotis pata- 

chonica), 418. 
Cetacea, order of, 403. 
Chacma (see Baboon, chacma), ^. 
Chalicotherium, 234. 
Chamois (Rupicapra tragus), 263. 
Chaus, or Indian jungle cat, 138. 
Cheeta (Cyncelurus jubatus), 146, 

148, 149. 
Chevrotain, African (Dorcatherium 

aquaticum), 342. 



2N 



545 



INDEX 



Chevrotain, East Indian (Tragukis 
meminna), 343. 

Chimpanzee (Anthropopithecus trog- 
lodytes), n, 20. 

Chimpanzee, bald (A. calvus), 12. 

Chinchilla {Chinchilla laniger), 416. 

Chipmunk, eastern (Tamias striatus), 

448, 453- 
Chipmunk, western (Tamias quadri- 

vitatus), 452. 
Chiroptera, order of Bats, 58. 
Chiru or orongo (Pantholops hodg- 

soni), 277. 
Civet cat, African (Viverra civetta), 

152. 
Civet cat, American, 221. 
Coaita, a spider monkey, 41. 
Coati, brown (Nasua nasica), 227. 
Coati, red (Nasua rufa), 227. 
Coloration, protective, 172, 364. 
Coloration, warning, 174. 
Colpeo (Canis azarce), 194. 
Colugo or kaguan (Galeopithecus 

volans), 69. 
Condylarthra, 231. 
Conies or rock -badgers, 232. 
Coon-bear, or panda, 221. 
Corsac (Canis cor sac), 209. 
Cougar, or puma, 90-97. 
Coyote (Canis latrans), 192. 
Coypu, or nutria (Myopotamus 

coypu), 422. 
Creodonta, order of, 79. 
Cuscuses (genus Cuscus), 501. 
Cutia, or agouti, 419. 
Cynodictis, 187. 
Cynogale, 154. 

Daedicurus, a glyptodon, 482. 
Daman (Procavia syriaca), 232. 
Dasyure, common or native cat 

(Dasyurus viverrinus), 509. 
Dasyures (family Dasyuridae), 507. 
Deer (family Cervidae), 298-333. 



Deer, American, 325. 
Deer, American red (Cervus cana- 
densis), 312. 
Deer, ancestry of, 302. 
Deer, antlers, types of, 326. 
Deer, antlers, service of, 301. 
Deer, antlers, structure of, 299, 300. 
Deer, axis or chital (Cervus axis), 

3°3, 3°8- # 
Deer, barking or kakar, 305. 
Deer, Chilean (Odocoileus chilensis), 

333- 
Deer, Chinese water (Hydropotes 

inermis), 304. 
Deer, coloration of, 302. 
Deer, common Virginian, or willow, 

326, 329. — See Deer, white-tailed. 
Deer, Costa Rican (Odocoileus 

clavatus), 333. 
Deer, Eld's or thamin (Cervus eldi), 

306. 
Deer, fallow (Cervusdama), 303, 309. 
Deer, gigantic Irish, 302. 
Deer, hog, or para (Cervus por- 

cinus), 305. 
Deer, Japanese (Cervus sika), 307. 
Deer, marsh (Odocoileus palustris), 

333- 
Deer, mule or blacktail (Odocoileus 

hemionus), 330. 
Deer, musk (Moschus moschiferus), 

3°4- 
Deer, Pampas (Odocoileus campes- 

tris), 333. 
Deer, Peking Park (Cervus davi- 

dianus), 303, 306. 
Deer, red (Cervus elephas), 309. 
Deer, roe (Capreolus caprea), 305. 
Deer, sambar (Cervus unicolor), 303, 

3°7- 
Deer, tufted (Elaphodus cephalo- 

lophus), 304. 
Deer, white-tailed (Odocoileus ameri- 
canus), 326. 



546 



INDEX 



Deer, winter "yards" of, 318, 327. 
Dermoptera, 69. 
Desmans (genus Myogale), 72. 
Dhole (Cyon dukkuncnsis), 197. 
Diana monkey (Cercopithecus di- 

ana), 28. 
Diceratherium, 374. 
Dingo (Canis dingo), 195. 
Dinocerata, 233, 234. 
Dinotherium, 391, 392. 
Dog, Azara's (Canis azarce), 194. 
Dog, crab-eating {Canis cancri- 

vorus), 194. 
Dog family (Canidae), 187. 
Dog, hunting or hyena (Lycaon 

pictus), 196. 
Dog, Lalande's or long-eared (Oto- 

cyon megalotis), 196. 
Dogs, ancestry of, 187. 
Dogs, Asiatic wild [Cyon), 197. 
Dogs, origin of domestic, 198, 210. 
Donkey, origin and traits of, 369. 
Dormouse (Muscardinus avellana- 

rius), 441. 
Douroucolis (monkeys), 45. 
Dromedary camel, 336. 
Dryopithecus, fossil ape, 19. 
Duckbill (Ornithorhynchus anati- 

nas), 523. 
Dugong (Halicore dugong), 402. 
Duikerboks, or bluebucks (genus 

Cephalophus), 281. 
Dziggettai, or Asiatic ass, 367. 

Echidna (E. aculeata), 525. 
Edentata, order of, 469-484. 
Egg-laying mammals, 521. 
Eland, common (Oreas canna), 269. 
Eland, Derbian (Oreas derbiana), 

270. 
Elasmotherium, 377. 
Elephant, African (Elephas ajrica- 

nus), 397. 
Elephant, evolution of, ^88, 392. 



Elephant, Indian (Elephas itidicus), 

393- 
Elephant, past and present, 386-399. 
Elk, American, or wapiti, 312. 
Elk, European (Alces machlis), 315. 
Endrina lemurs (subfamily Indri- 

sinae), 51. 
Entellus monkey (Semnopithecus 

entellus), 24. 
Eohippus, Eocene horse, 353, 354. 
Eolithic man, 10. 
Epanorthidae, 505. 
Ermine, 169, 170. 
Eutheria, subclass of, 490. 
Eyra (Felis eyra), 104. 

Face, the human, 9. 

Felidae (cat family), 90. 

Fennec (Canis [Fennecus] zerda), 

209. 
Ferret, black -footed (Putorius ni- 

gripes), 168. 
Ferrets (tamed polecats), 168. 
Fisher, or pekan (Mustela pennanti), 

164, 165. 
Fitch fur, 168. 
Flying-foxes, or fox-bats, 65. 
Flying-squirrel, see Squirrels, Flying, 

445- 
Fodientia, order of, 485. 
Food storage; evolution of habit, 

449. 
Fossane (Fossa daubentoni), 153. 
Foumart, or polecat, 168. 
Foussa (Cryptoprocta fossa), 151. 
Fox, American red (Canis virgin- 

ianus), 203. 
Fox, Arctic (Canis lagopus), 207. 
Fox, big-eared (Canis megalotis), 

204. 
Fox, blue, or white Arctic, 207. 
Fox, corsac (Canis cor sac), 209. 
Fox, East-Indian (Canis bengalen- 

sis), 209. 



547 



INDEX 



Fox, European red {Canis vulpes), 

203. 
Fox, fennec or zerda, 209. 
Fox, gray {Canis [Urocyon] cinereo- 

argenteus), 206. 
Fox, kit or swift {Canis velox), 204. 
Fox, sagacity of, 202. 
Fox-bats, or flying-foxes, 65. 
Fox-dogs (genus Lycalopex), 193. 
Fur bearers {Mustelidce), 162-187. 

Galago, great, or palm rat {Galago 

crassicaudata) , 53. 
Galago lemurs (genus Galago), 53. 
Galecynus, 188. 
Ganesha, elephant god, 394. 
Ganodonta, order of, 484. 
Gaur {Bos gaurus), 240. 
Gayal or mithan {Bos frontalis), 

241. 
Gazelles, dorcas {Gazella dorcas), 

275- 
Gemsbok {Oryx gazella), 273. 
Gemse, or chamois, 263. 
Genet, Mediterranean {Genetta vul- 
garis), 153. 
Gerbilles {Gerbillince), 441. 
Ghorkhar, or Asiatic ass, 367. 
Gibbons (genus Hylobates), 21-23. 
Giraffe, five-horned, 294. 
Giraffe {Girajfa camelopardalis), 

292-295. 
Glutton {Gulo luscus), 166. 
Glyptodons, club-tailed, 482. 
Glyptodons, ring-tailed, 483. 
Gnu, brindled {Connochcetes tau- 

rinus), 284. 
Gnu, white-tailed {Connochcetes gnu), 

284. 
Goat, Persian {Capra cegagrus), 259. 
Goat, Rocky Mountain white 

{Oreamnus montanus), 263. 
Goat, Spanish {Capra pyrenaica), 

259- 



Goats, domestic, 260. 

Gopher, prairie {Geomys bursarius), 
427. 

Gopher, small gray {Thomomys 
talpoides), 428. 

Gopher, southern {Geomys tuza),42j. 

Gophers, habits of, 426. 

Gorilla {Gorilla savagei), 15. 

Grison or huron {Grisonia vittata), 
167. 

Grivet monkey {Cercopithecus sa- 
bceus), 28. 

Ground hog or woodchuck, 458. 

Ground sloths, 480. 

Guanaco. — See Huanaco. 

Guemal deer, ^^. 

Guenon monkeys (genus Cercopi- 
thecus), 28. 

Guereza, white-tailed {Colobus cau- 
data), 27. 

Guinea pigs, 421. 

Guljar {Ovis poll), 253, 254. 

Hair, green, of sloths, 474. 
Hair of mammals, 3. 
Halitherium, fossil Sirenian, 400. 
Hangul, or Kashmir red deer, 310. 
Hanuman, monkey-god, 24. 
Hare, wood or cottontail {Lepus 

sylvaticus), 408, 412. 
Hare, southern marsh {Lepus palus- 

tris), 413. 
Hare, southern water {Lepus aquati- 

cus), 413. 
Hare, varying {Lepus americanus), 

4i3- 
Hares and rabbits, 407. 
Harrisbuck or sable antelope, 273. 
Hartbeests (genus Bubalis), 282. 
Hedgehog {Erinaceus europceus), 75. 
Hedgehog superstitions, 76. 
Helladotherium, 298. 
Hemicyon, 210. 
Hemigales, 154. 



548 



INDEX 



Heraldic lion considered, 89. 
Hibernation, assisted by lack of air, 

452. 
Hibernation of bear, 219. 
Hibernation, phenomena of, 459. 
Hippopotamus {Hippopotamus am- 

phibius), 350. 
Hippopotamus, evolution of, 350, 

352. 
Hoolock gibbon (Hylobatcs hoolock), 

22. 
Horns, treatise on, 237. 
Horse, evolution of, 352-360. 
Horse, Przewalsky's, 360. 
Horses, ancestry of modern (Equus 

caballus), 359, 361. 
Horses, migration of Tertiary, 357. 
Horses of prehistoric man, 359. 
Howlers, or howling Monkeys, 43. 
Huanaco {Lama huanacos), 338. 
Hunting-leopard, or cheeta, 146, 148. 
Huron or grison, 167. 
Hutia, Cuban {Capromys melanurus), 

422. 
Hyaenarctus, 210. 
Hyaenodons (creodonts), 81. 
Hyena, spotted {Crocuta maculata), 

159, 161. 
Hyena, striped {Hycena striata), 159. 
Hyohippus, Miocene horse, 354. 
Hyracoidea, 231. 
Hyracotherium, 353. 

Ibex, European {Capra ibex), 260. 
Ibex, Himalayan {Capra sibirica), 

261. 
Ichneumon, Abyssinian {Herpestes 

albicauda), 157. 
Ichneumon, Egyptian {Herpestes 

ichneumon), 154, 156. 
Ictithere, primitive carnivore, 85, 

159- 
Indris or babakoto, a lemur {Indris 
brevicaudatus), 51. 



Insectivora, order of, characterized, 

68. 
Inyala, or Angas's antelope, 271. 
Ivory, fossil, and living, 389, 399. 
Izard, or atchi, 263. 

Jackals, African, 194, 196. 
Jackals, Indian {Canis aureus), 195. 
Jack rabbits, American, 410. 
Jaguar {Felis jaguar), 97-101, 345. 
Jaguar, methods of hunting, 100. 
Jerboa, Egyptian {Dipus hirtipes), 

423, 424. 
Jumping deer, or mule deer, 331. 
Jumping mouse {Zapus hudsonius), 

424. 

Kanchil or napu, 343. 

Kangaroo, brush, or wallabies, 498. 

Kangaroo, great gray {Macropus 

giganteus), 495. 
Kangaroo rat (genus Potorous), 499. 
Kangaroo rats and mice, 424. 
Kangaroo, red {Macropus rujus), 

496. 
Kiang or kulan, 367. 
Kinkajou {Cercoleptes caudivolvus), 

227. 
Klipspringer {Oreotragus saltator), 

281. 
Koala {Phascolarctos cinereus), 501. 
Koodos {Strepsiceros kudu), 269, 275. 

Langurs, 25. 

Lar gibbon {Hylobates lar), 22. 
Lemming, habits of, 433. 
Lemming, Scandinavian {Lemmus 

lemmus), 433. 
Lemmings, migratory, 433-436. 
Lemur, flying, or colugo, 69. 
Lemur, ring-tailed {Lemur catta), 52. 
Lemur, ruffed {Lemur varius), 52. 
Lemurs (suborder Lemuroidea), 

characterized, 48, 51. 



549 



INDEX 



Lemurs, dwarf (genus Microcebus), 

54- 
Lemurs, fat-tailed (genus Opolemur), 

54. 
Lemurs, mouse (genus Chirogale), 

54. 
Lemurs, slow (subfamily Lorisinae), 

54- 
Lemurs, superstitions in regard to, 

5i, 55- 
Lemurs, typical (subfamily Lemur- 

inae), 52. 
Leopard-cat, of Texas, 101; of 

Bengal, 132. 
Leopard, clouded (Felts nebulosa), 

131- 
Leopard, hunting, 146. 
Leopard, or panther (Felis pardus), 

127. 
Leopard, snow (Felis undo), 130. 
Leporidae, hare family, 407. 
Linsang, 153. 
Lion (Felis leo) in fact and fable, 

105-123. 
Lion and buffalo, etc!, 114. 
Lion in Asia, 122. 
Lion, man-eating, 116, 118. 
Lion, prehistoric, 121. 
Lion, superstitions as to, 116. 
Litopterna, a fossil equine, 370. 
Llama, Peruvian, 339. 
Llamas, ancestry of, 335. 
Loris, slender (Loris gracilis), 54. 
Loris, slow (Nycticebus tardigradus), 

54, 56. 
Loxolophodon, 234. 
Lucivee (i.e. loup cervier), 142. 
Lynx, Canada (Felis canadensis), 

141, 143. 
Lynx, European (Felis lyncus), 142, 

148. 



Macaque, Bengal or rhesus monkey 
(see Rhesus), 30. 



Macaque, Japanese (Macacus fusca- 

tus), 30. 
Macaque, leonine (Macacus leo- 

ninus), 30. 
Macaque, lion-tailed (Macacus 

silenus), 31. 
Macaque, pig-tailed (Macacus neme- 

strinus), 30. 
Macrotherium, 234. 
Magot (see Ape of Gibraltar), 31. 
Malmag or tarsier (Tarsius tarsius), 

49, 55- 
Mammals, hoofed (Ungulata), 231, 

236. 
Mammals, marine (Pinnipedia), 230. 
Mammals, name of, 1. 
Mammals, origin and history of, 5. 
Mammals, rank of, 2. 
Mammals, teeth (dental formula), 

Si- 
Mammoths, Siberian, 389. 
Man (Homo sapiens), 7. 
Manatee, Florida (Manatus ameri- 

canus), 403. 
Manatee, South American (Manatus 

inunguis), 402. 
Mandrill (see Baboon), 32, 34. 
Mangabey monkeys (genus Cerco- 

cebus), 29. 
Manigordo, or ocelot, 101. 
Mapurito (Conepatus mapurito), 

182. 
Maral, or Persian red deer, 310. 
Margay (Felis tigrina), 103, 104. 
Markhor, Himalayan (Capra fal- 
coner i), 261. 
Marmosets and tamarins (family 

Hapalidae), 46. 
Marmot, alpine (Arctomys mar- 

motta), 457. 
Marsupialia, order of, 488-520. 
Marsupials, adapted types, 493. 
Marsupials, ancestry of, 490, 505, 

5i3- 



55o 



INDEX 



Marsupials, distribution of, 491, 513. 
Marsupials, reproduction in, 488. 
Marten, American pine (Mustcla 

amcricana), 164. 
Marten, beech (Mustcla foina), 164. 
Marten, domesticated in Greece, 139. 
Marten, European pine (Mustcla 

marks), 164. 
Marten, Pennant's, 164. 
Mastodons (genus Mastodon), 390, 

394- 
Meerkat (Suricata tridactyla), 157. 
Megatherium (M. robustus), 480. 
Merycodus, 286. 
Mesohippus, Oligocene horse, 353, 

354- 
Meson vx, a creodont, 78, 81. 
Metatheria, subclass of, 490. 
Mias, Dyak name for orang-utan, 

17, 19. 
Mice and rats (Muridae), 423, 428. 
Mi-lou, or David's Peking Park deer, 

3°3, 3° 6 - 
Mink (Putorius vison), 172. 
Mithan or gayal, 241. 
Mceritherium, 392, 394. 
Mole, marsupial (Notoryctes typh- 

lops), 506. 
Mole, star-nosed (Condylura cristata), 

74- 
Moles, golden (genus Chrysochloris), 

74- 
Moles, habits and homes of, 72, 73. 
Monkeys and allies, 23-48. 
Monkeys and apes, fossil, 10, 19, 37, 

48. ' 
Monkeys, barrigudo or woolly 

(genus Lagothrix), 41. 
Monkeys, Capuchin (genus Cebus), 

38- ' 
Monkeys, howling (genus Mycetes 

or Allouatta), 43. 
Monkeys, night (genus Nyctipi- 

thecus), 45. 



Monkeys, ooakari (genus Uakaria), 
44. 

Monkeys, of New World, character- 
ized, 37. 

Monkeys, sacred, 24, 30, 36. 

Monkeys, saki (genus Pithecia), 44. 

Monkeys, spider (genus Ateles), 41. 

Monkeys, squirrel (genus Chryso- 
thrix), 46. 

Monkeys, teetee, or titi (genus Cal- 
lithrix), 45. 

Monotremata, order of, 521-526. 

Moose (Alces machlis), 316. 

Mountain lion, the puma, 90. 

Mouse, harvest (Mus minutus), 430. 

Mouse, house (Mus musculus), 428. 

Mouse, meadow (Microtus pennsyl- 
vanicus), 432. 

Mouse, pine (Microtus pinetorum), 

433- 
Mouse, white-footed (Peromyscus 

leucopus), 440. 
Mungoos (Herpestes mungoos), 155. 
Muntjac, Indian (Cervulus muntjac), 

3°5- 

Musk, of musk deer, 304. 

Musk -hog, javeline, tajacu, or pec- 
cary (Ovibos moschatus), 344. 

Musk ox, 265-268. 

Muskrat (Fiber zibethecus), 436. 

Mustelidae (fur bearers), 162-187. 

Mylodons, 480. 

Nahura, sheep, 257. 
Native bear, or koala, 501. 
Necrolestes (fossil insectivore), 506. 
Neohipparion, Miocene horse, 355. 
Night monkeys, 45. 
Nilgai or blue cow, 272. 
Nodiak (Proechidna bruijnii), 525. 
Nyan (Ovis hodgsoni), 255. 

Ocelot (Felis pardalis), 101. 
Okapi (Ocapia johnstoni), 296-298. 



55i 



INDEX 



Oligobunis, 188. 

Onager, or Asiatic ass, 367. 

Onka, or agile gibbon {Hylobates 
agilis), 22. 

Ooakaries (monkeys), 44. 

Oorial or sha (Ovis vignei), 251, 252. 

Opossum family (Didelphidae), 513. 

Opossum, Australian, 500, 502. 

Opossum, evolution of habits, 519. 

Opossum, murine (Didelphis mu- 
rina), 519. 

Opossum, of United States (Didel- 
phis virginianus) , 574. 

Opossum, water (Chironectes mini- 
ma), 520. 

Opossum -rat (Canolestes obscurus), 

5°5- 

Orang-utan (Simia satyrus), 17, 20. 

Ornithorhynchus or duckbill, 523. 

Orohippus, Eocene horse, 353. 

Oryx antelopes (genus Oryx), 272. 

Otter, Brazilian (Pteronura brasili- 
ensis), 184. 

Otter, European (Lutra vulgaris), 183. 

Otter, North American {Lutra cana- 
densis), 184. 

Otter, sea (Latax lutris), 185. 

Ounce (Felis uncia), 130. 

Oxen or cattle, 238. 

Paca (Coslogenys paca), 419. 
Pack-rat, bushy tailed (Neotoma 

cinereus), 439. 
Pajero, or grass cat, 103. 
Palaeomastodon, 392, 394. 
Palhyaena, 159. 
Palm rat, a galago, 53. 
Pampas cat (Felis pajeros), 103. 
Panda (JElurus Julgens), 221. 
Pangolin, West African (Manis 

gigantea), 487. 
Panther (puma or leopard), 94, 127. 
Pantolambda, 233. 
Paradoxures or tree-cats, 153. 



Parahippus, Miocene horse, 355. 
Peccary, collared (Tayassu angu- 

latum), 344. 
Peccary, white-lipped (Dicotyles 

labiatus), 345. 
Pekan or Pennant's marten, 164. 
Peludo armadillo, 476, 477. 
Perissodactyla, 234, 236, 352. 
Phalanger, long-snouted (Tarsipes 

roslratus), 503. 
Phalanger, opossum (Trichosurus 

vidpecula), 502. 
Phalanger, yellow, flying (Petaurus 

australis), 502. 
Phenacodus, 230. 
Pigs, intelligence of, 346. 
Pigs, source of domestic, 346. 
Pinnipedia, order, 230. 
Pisoti, or coati, 227. 
Pithecanthropus (P. erectus), 10. 
Platypus, or duckbill, 523. 
Playing 'possum, considered, 518, 

519- 

Plesictis, 162. 

Pliohippus, Miocene horse, 355. 
Pocket mice and gophers, 426, 427. 
Polecat (Putorius fcetidus), 168. 
Porcupine, artistic use of quills, 415. 
Porcupine, Brazilian tree (Sphin- 

gurus prehensilis), 416. 
Porcupine, Canada (Erethizon dor- 

satus), 414. 
Porcupine, European (Hystrix cris- 

tata), 413. 
Porcupine, yellow-haired (Erethizon 

epixanthus), 415. 
Potto, Bosman's (Perodicticus potto), 

54- 
Pouch, evolution of marsupial, 512. 
Prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), 

454- 
Primates, characteristics of order, 7. 
Proboscidea, elephant order, 386- 

399- 



552 



INDEX 



Pronghorn (Antilocapra amcricana), 

286-292. 
Protective coloration, 295, 303. 
Protohippus, Miocene horse, 354, 

355- 
Protorohippus, Eocene horse, 353. 
Prototheria, subclass of, 490, 521- 

526. 
Pudu deer (Pudua humilis), 333. 
Puma (Fclis con col or), 90-97. 
Puma, behavior toward man, 95. 
Puma, methods of hunting, 96. 
Puss and her ancestors, 133-141. 

Quagga (Equus quagga), 363. 

Rabbit, cottontail, or wood hare, 

411. 
Rabbit, domestic (Lepus cuniculus) , 

408. 
Rabbit, plague of, in Australia, 409. 
Rabbit, use of the word, 408. 
Raccoon (Procyon lotor), 221. 
Rat, bamboo (genus Rhizomys), 431. 
Rat, beaver (Hydromys chrysogaster), 

43 1 - 
Rat, black (Mus alexandrinas) , 429. 
Rat, brown house (Mus rattus), 429. 
Rat, crested or webber (Lophiomys 

imhausi), 441. 
Rat, kangaroo (Perodipus and Dipo- 

domys), 424. 
Ratel, African (Mellivora capensis), 

i75- 
Ratel, East Indian (Mellivora indica), 

176. 
Rats as sources of disease, 430. 
Ravine deer or blackbuck, 277. 
Recognition colors, 287. 
Reindeer, European (Rangijer taran- 

<M, 3 2I > 3 2 5- 
Restoration of fossil animals, 87. 
Rhesus monkey (Macacus rhesus), 

3°- 



Rhinoceros, African black (R. bi- 
c or iris), 381. 

Rhinoceros, ancestry of, 374. 

Rhinoceros, hairy-eared (R. lasiotis), 
380. 

Rhinoceros, horn of, 375, 376, 377. 

Rhinoceros, Indian {Rhinoceros in- 
dicus), 378. 

Rhinoceros, Sumatran or Sondaic 
(R. sondaicus), 381. 

Rhinoceros, white or square- 
mouthed (R. simus), 382. 

Rhinoceros, woolly or tichorine, 377. 

Rhytina or Arctic sea-cow, 400. 

Rock-badgers or rock-rabbits, 232. 

Rodentia, order of Gnawers, 404. 

Rodents, ancestry of, 406. 

Roebuck (Capreolus caprea), 305. 

Ruminantia, 236-334. 

Ruminants, digestion in, 273. 

Saber-toothed tigers, 86-90. 

Sable, American (Mustcla ameri- 
cana), 164. 

Sable, European (Mus tela zibellina), 
164. 

Saiga, or kiik (Saiga tartarica) 278. 

Saimiris (monkeys), 46. 

Sakis or ooakaries (monkeys), 44. 

Salamander (Geomys tuza), 427. 

Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor), 303, 

3°7- 
Samotherium, 298. 
Sapajou, or Capuchin monkey, 38. 
Sapi-utan, or anoa, 243. 
Scaletails (Anomaluris), 446. 
Sea-cows (Sirenia), 400. 
Sea-otter (Latax lutris), 186. 
Seals and sea-bears, 230. 
Serval (Felis serval), 133. 
Set, symbolized by okapi, 297. 
Sha or oorial, 251, 252. 
Sheep, Barbary, 257. 
Sheep, blue (Ovis nahura), 257. 



553 



INDEX 



Sheep and goats, 251. 

Sheep, Marco Polo's, 253, 254. 

Sheep, Rocky Mountain or bighorn, 

256. 
Shou, or Thibetan red deer, 312. 
Shrew, elephant, 74. 
Shrew, long-tailed (Sorex persona- 

tus), 70. 
Shrew, short-tailed (Blarina brevi- 

cauda), 69. 
Shrews, superstitions as to, 71. 
Shrewmole, western (Urotrichus 

gibbsi), 70. 
Siamang (Hylobates syndactylies), 21. 
Sifaka lemurs (Propithecus), 51. 
Siffleur or whistler (Arctomys prui- 

nosus), 458. 
Sika deer, 307, 308. 
Sirenia, order of, 400-403. 
Sitatunga or Nakong (Tragelaphus 

spekei), 272. 
Sivatherium, 292, 298. 
Skunk, eastern (Mephitis mephitica), 

179. 
Skunk, scent glands, 175, 182. 
Skunk, striped (Spilogale), 182. 
Skunk, white-backed or mapurito, 

182. 
Sladang, or Malayan gaur, 240. 
Sloth, three-toed (Bradypus tri- 

dactylus), 473. 
Sloth, two -toed (Cholcepus didac- 

tylus), 473. 
Sloths, greenness of hair on, 474. 
Smilodon, a saber-tooth, 87, 88. 
Snow leopard, 130. 
Speech, human, 8. 
Spermophiles and sousliks, 454. 
Spider monkey, or coaita, 41. 
Springbok (Antidorcas euchore), 279. 
Squirrel, Abert's (Sciurus aberti), 

444. 
Squirrel, Douglas's (Sciurus doug- 

lasi), 444. 



Squirrel, European (Sciurus vul- 
garis), 443. 
Squirrel, flying (Pleromys volans), 

445, 447- 
Squirrel, Fremont's (Sciurus }re- 

monti), 444. 
Squirrel, golden-backed (Callo- 

spermophilus chrysodeirus) , 453. 
Squirrel, gray (Sciurus carolinensis), 

442. 
Squirrel, Malabar (Sciurus maxi- 

mus), 445. 
Squirrel, red (Sciurus hudsonius), 

443- 
Squirrels, ground, or Spermophiles, 

452. 
Stegodon, a primitive elephant, 390. 
Steinbok antelope (Nanotragus 

campestris), 281. 
Steinbok, or ibex (Capra ibex), 

260. 
Straw, or pampas, cat, 103. 
Sugar squirrel (Petaurus sciureus), 

5°3- 
Suina, non-ruminants, 236, 345. 
Superstitions relating to animals, 

24, 3°, 3 6 , 5i, 55, 62, 67, 71, 76, 

116, 125, 134, 160, 192, 242, 378, 

390, 487. 
Suricate or meerkat, 157. 
Swine family (Suidae), 345. 

Taguan or tooan (Petauroides 
volans), 502. 

Tahr (Hemitragus jemlaicus), 262. 

Tail, the prehensile, 38. 

Tait, or long-snouted phalanger, 503. 

Takin, Thibetan (Budorcas taxi- 
color), 262. 

Tamandua assu, 469, 473. 

Tamarao (Bos mindorensis), 243. 

Tapir, American (Tapirus terrestris) ) 

373- 
Tapir, ancestry of, 371. 



554 



INDEX 



Tapir, Malayan (Tapirus indicus), 

372. 

Tardo or two-toed sloth, 473. 

Tarsier, spectral (Tarsius tar si us), 
49. 

Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus ur si- 
nus), 508. 

Tasmanian wolf or thylacine, 511. 

Tayra (Galictis barbara), 167. 

Teetee, or titi, monkeys, 45. 

Teeth of a carnivore, 82. 

Teludu (My dans meliceps), 176. 

Tenrecs (family Centetidae), 75. 

Thamin or Eld's deer, 306. 

Thylacine (Thylacinus cynoce- 
phalus), 511. 

Tiger (Felts tigris), 123-127. 

Tiger, man-eating, 125. 

Tiger, superstitions as to, 125. 

Tiger-cat, American, 101, 103. 

Tigre or onca, the jaguar, 97. 

Tillodontia and Tillotherium, 406. 

Tinoceras, 234. 

Titanotherium, 375. 

Toddy cat or palm civet, 153. 

Toxodon, 234. 

Tree-tiger, or clouded leopard, 131. 

Tremarctus, 211. 

Trilophodon, 393, 394. 

Tsine, or banteng, 241. 

Tuco-tuco (Ctenomys magellanica), 
422. 

Tupias or tree-shrews, 75. 



Turs (Capra cylindricornis, etc.), 
258. 

Uintatherium, 234. 
Unau, or three-toed sloth, 473. 
Ungulata, order, 231, 235. 
Unicorn, origin of fabled, 273. 
Urus, or aurochs, 238. 

Veneration for animals, 394. 
Vicunia (Lama vicugna), 338, 341. 
Viscacha (Lagostomus trichodac- 

tylus), 417. 
Viverridae (civet family). 
Voles and water rats, 431. 

Wallaby, rock (Petrogale xanthopus), 

489, 498. 
Webber (Lophiomys imhausi), 441. 
Whistler, or siffleur, 458. 
Winter, how animals endure it, 449. 
Wolf, gray (Canis lupus), 188. 
Wolf, prairie, or coyote, 192. 
Wolverine (Gulo luscus), 166. 
Wombat (Phascolomys wombat), 504. 
Woodchuck, eastern (Arctomys mo- 

nax), 458. 
Wood-rats (genus Neotoma), 439. 

Yak or duank (Bos grunniens), 246. 
Yapock, or water opossum, 520. 

Zebras, African, 369. 

Zebra wolf, or thylacine, 511. 



555 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



WILD NEIGHBORS 

Out-door Studies in the United States 

With Numerous Illustrations 

Cloth 12mo $1 50 

" Mr. Ingersoll's book may be heartily commended to all. It is another 
most valuable addition to that none too rapidly growing library of works deal- 
ing with the mysteries of the natural world about us, in such a charmingly 
interesting and yet scientifically accurate way that the present and coming gen- 
erations can have no possible excuse for being, as has been too long the case, 
strangers at home." — Minneapolis Tribune. 

"The book is written in admirable style, with a brightness and vivacity 
often lacking in similar works. It is in all respects a most v\ elcome book, and 
will find place on the home shelves, in the clubs, in the libraries, and among 
the treasures of the growing boy no less." — Connecticut Post. 



AN ISLAND IN THE AIR 

A Story of Singular Adventures in the Mesa. Country 

Illustrated with a frontispiece in colors, fu 11= page half-tones, and many 
drawings in the text 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 

A story of real adventure on the real frontier, — the Far West of fifty years 
ago, when life was large and free, with game for the shooting ; with bears and 
wolves and cougars ; with Indians and soldiers and emigrant trains, and all 
the picturesque furniture of a land of promise for healthy sport. It was neither 
sport nor romance, however, that these young people — boys and girls — were 
in search of down there on the borders of the Navajo country — they came 
because they had to. Nothing was further from their minds than to get sepa- 
rated from their elders by a strange yet perfectly natural accident, and to find 
themselves marooned upon a desert island in a sea of blue air, and then to get 
away by aid of a lot of Mokis, dead and alive. But so it happened ; and 
being brave, resourceful, and jolly, the youngsters met their adventures half- 
way, acquitted themselves with credit, and so escaped from difficulties which 
might have daunted older heads and hands. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



CITIZEN BIRD 

Scenes from bird-life in plain English for a, beginner 

By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT and Dr. ELLIOTT COUES 

Illustrated Cloth 12mo $1.50 net 

" There is no other book in existence so well fitted for arousing and direct- 
ing the interest that all children feel toward the birds." — Tribune, Chicago. 



FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 

AND THEIR KIN 
By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 

Edited by Frank M. Chapman 

Illustrated Cloth 12mo $1.50 net 

" This is a superb volume, likely to become a favorite. ... It will make a 
wise choice for a gift for a boy or a girl." — Education. 



BIRDCRAFT 

A field-book of t<wo hundred song, game, and water birds 

By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 

With eighty fulhpage plates by Louis Agassiz Fuertes 

Cloth 8vo $2.50 net 

One of the best books that amateurs in the study of ornithology can find, 
. direct, forcible, plain, and pleasing." — The Chautauquan. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE. NEW YORK 



SPORTSMAN "JOE" 

By EDWYN SANDYS 

Author of " Upland Game Birds," "Trapper 'Jim.'" etc. 

With Illustrations by J. M. Gleeson and C. W. Pancoast 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 

"We feel a sincere sympathy for the sportsman, young or old, who has not 
known the pleasure of following Edwyn Sandys' 'Trapper Jim' and 'Spoits- 
man Joe,' each in their separate and varied careers, through some 350 pages 
of about the most fascinating literature imaginable. Besides being human 
interest stories, these two books are veritable storehouses of accurate sports- 
man lore, so skilfully inserted as to impress this knowledge indelibly on the 
retina of the mind without in even the smallest measure sacrificing the 
interest." — N. Y. American. 



TRAPPER "JIM" 

By EDWYN SANDYS 

Author of " Upland Game Birds," etc. 

With illustrations from photographs, drawings, and diagrams 
Cloth 12mo $1.50 

"A book for every up-to-date boy, not only because he will thoroughly 
enjoy it, and learn much from it, but also because it will make him more 
manly." — Boston Transcript. 

"Sufficient to gain for him the friendship of all live boys who read it; ... 
so interesting that the average boy will throw away a story of Indians or 
detectives to read it." — The Reader. 

"A kind of holiday in itself. It feeds the hungry imagination. . . . The 
boy who cannot feast upon this provision, deliciously presented, ought to ask 
the doctor to look at his tongue." — The Watchman. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



The American Sportsman's Library 

Under the general editorship of Caspar Whitney, editor of Outing 

Cloth Crown 8vo $2.00 net each 

EACH VOLUME PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED 

THE DEER FAMILY 

By Theodore Roosevelt, T. S. Van Dyke, D. G. Elliott, and 
A. J. Stone 
SALMON AND TROUT 

By Dean Sage, W. C. Harris, H. M. Smith, and C. H. Townsend 
UPLAND GAME BIRDS 

By Edwyn Sandys and T. S. Van Dyke 
THE WATER-FOWL FAMILY 

By L. C. Sanford, L. B. Bishop, and T. S. Van Dyke 
BASS, PIKE, PERCH, AND OTHERS 

By J. A. Hen shall 
THE BIG GAME FISHES OF THE UNITED STATES 

By Charles F. Holder 
MUSK-OX, BISON, SHEEP, AND GOAT 

By Caspar Whitney, George B. Grinnell, and Owen Wister 
GUNS, AMMUNITION, AND TACKLE 

By Capt. A. W. Money, Horace Kephart, W. E. Carlin, A. L. A. 
Himmelwright, and J. Harrington Keene 
THE SPORTING DOG 

By Joseph A. Graham 
AMERICAN YACHTING 

By W. B. Stephens 
LAWN TENNIS AND LACROSSE 

By J. Parmly Paret and Dr. W. H. Maddren 
THE TROTTING AND TPIE PACING HORSE 

By Hamilton Busbey 
THE AMERICAN THOROUGHBRED 

By Charles E. Trevathan 
RIDING AND DRIVING 

By Edward L. Anderson and Price Collier 
PHOTOGRAPHY FOR THE SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 

By L. W. Brownell 
ROWING AND TRACK ATHLETICS 

By Samuel Crowther and Arthur Ruhl 



In Preparation for Early Issue : 

THE BEAR FAMILY 

COUGAR, WILD-CAT, WOLF, AND FOX 
BASEBALL AND FOOTBALL 

SKATING, HOCKEY, and SKATE SAILING 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



L/BRARY OF 




CONGRESS 



005 486 047 A 



